The first strip of the train trip ahead was long. After leaving Göteborg the train went through Skövde, Örebrö, Stockholm, Uppsala, Gävle, Ågne, Sundsvall, Umeå to Luleå. Checking the map before the trip and just thinking about getting the chance to see all this Swedish landscape as it changes from south to north got me quite excited. In fact, I got so excited that when booking the tickets I did not even for a moment doubt that I’d want to shut my eyes on this 24 hour train ride; all I had in mind was a romantic view of the forests and lakes as they rush by.

Sure enough there was plenty of trees and lakes, but booking regular seats instead of the sleeping car bunk beds was a mistake. It proved to be difficult enough to sleep in the middle seat with nothing to lean on, but on top of this the train was packed and having a kid with growing pains sitting right opposite of you is not exactly exhilarating circumstance either. And then again, as it turned out, the landscape was rather monotonous too: 1800 km of forests, lakes and occasionally a house flew by here and there.

One thing to keep in mind if wanting to travel fairly cheap around Sweden is that railroad passenger transportation is privatized here. As such it much more resembles air than land travel. Not in the sense that you need to be worried about your luggage being placed on the train to Berlin as you left towards Kiruna. Luckily the only resemblance is the ticket pricing methods: the earlier you buy, the better deal you get. And if you buy them a month or so in advance, prices can be almost as ridiculous as flying for one euro from London to Bangalore, if the company doesn’t declare bankruptcy before take off, that is. Anyway, the good thing is that you can buy tickets on the net and then collect them from any ticket machine located on every train station in the country.

Almost exactly 24 hours after we left Göteborg we reach the twin cities of Haparanda and Tornio. The former being in Sweden, the latter in Finland they resemble a little Nova Gorica and Gorizia in Slovenia and Italy. But that is just about all these four cities have in common. While Gorica and Gorizia actually have someone living there, Haparanda and Tornio are like ghost towns. We were there on a Friday night and it seemed like someone has rised the threat of a terrorist attack or some other similarly stupid modern-day threat. Besides the operating bus that brought us there, two cars driving by and three intoxicates, we were the only living beings.

Besides, both towns definitely had a rather peculiar feel to them as they both looked like a time capsule sealed off in the 1950s. Or maybe people did leave fifty years ago. Not that I have ever lived in the 1950s, mind you, but I do come from a place where everything from the stores to the cars in the 1980s still resembled the 1950s. The only two cars in Haparanda-Tornio we saw confirmed our assumption, while the bus was in mint condition despite the age and was aptly decorated with washed-out red seats and outfitted with a coffee machine that probably broke down at least 20 years ago. Quite nifty and nostalgic, I must say.

Even the huge IKEA shopping center was not too assuring of towns’ inhabitants presence. I just couldn’t think of anything else but propaganda when reading about the millionth shopper at the very same IKEA who was supposedly there a week earlier and what the place looked like during our short visit. Things somehow just didn’t add up.

It is only after traveling this far north that I have fully realized what the locals have in mind when they grumble about their exceptional welfare they enjoy over here. Although it is true that somehow it has been exactly in this part of the world where the density of social states has probably reached higher density than anywhere else. I finaly begun understanding why these states definitely need to pamper their citizens if they want to prevent their fleeing to some place cozier. Although the attempt in Haparanda-Tornio didn’t seem to have succeeded after all.

But then again, after more than 2300 kilometers and almost countless hours of sitting in the train (OK, three days, so not really countless), I was quite exhausted and as a consequence content by the time we reached Kuopio, a tiny town in the middle of Finnish lakeland. Home sweet home, or more aptly, bed sweet bed.

Mladen

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 14th, 2007 at 11:49 pm and is filed under Finland, Sweden, Travelogue. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.