Thu, 07 Aug 2003

author Tim	location Tornio, Lapland, Finland
posted 21:13 EEST	section Europe2002/Europe/Finland ( all photos )

Santa Claus' House ( 6 photos )
After my late night staying up for a while then giving up looking for the sunrise due to cloud and tiredness, it was a late start getting on the road this morning.
When Liz did eventually drag me out of bed, we packed up then drove about thirty seconds into town to have a good look around the Sami handycraft shops. There was plenty of Made in China touristy garbage around, but if you looked under the cover, you could see silversmiths working on the pieces in the back of the shops, weavers weaving and the like.
After walking around the town and seeing what was on offer, I eventually parted with not too much money for a very nice Sami knife in a pouch. Holding the real ones next to the horrible touristy ones I was glad I had waited until here to buy it.
We then hit the road for lots of what was basically a long driving day, heading almost due South along the E75. It is amazing what a difference being able to drive at 100km/h makes - we get so much further it is constantly suprising us.
The only real stop of interest all day was half an hour or so spent wandering around the "official" residence of Santa Claus, Santa Claus' Village. Built on top of the Arctic Circle crossing for maximum tourist potential, we were shocked to find out we didn't actually have to pay to get in. Also, it was all quite well done.
We saw the "real" Santa (although Liz claims he is a fake just because he was wearing grey tracksuit pants), and marvelled at the dazzling array of Christmas garbage you could buy. So, to make up for not having to pay an entrance fee, we bought some.
We also poked our heads into Santa's Official Post Office, where there were letters from all around the world filed away. I'm not sure if they have one from me on record, but it's interesting to look at the pigeon hole where it would have sat, thinking about how far away it seems when you are sitting in Sydney.
We used the excuse of it being the northern-most in the world to stop off at the McDonalds in Rovaniemi just south of Santa's House. Tasted just like it did in Tasmania.
Pushing south back out of the Arctic Circle, we drove on towards the town of Tornio / Haparanda. This place has two names since it is actually a city in two halves. One part, Tornio, is in Finland, and the other is over the bridge in Sverige. Just how the locals manage to change their watches by an hour every time they cross the bridge is beyond me.
That reminds me of a golf course that Lonely Planet points out here where "you can tee off in Finland and hit the ball into Sweden, which means if you start at, say, 12:30am, the ball will remain in the air for an hour and land in yesterday." Makes me wish I had kept my golf up just for the novelty value.
We drove around for a while looking at signs on the roads and trying to find them on our Lonely Planet map, until it emerged that Liz was trying to navigate us with the map of Turku, some 700km south of here! Needless to say, we ended up feeling our way towards the closed Tourist Office, where we got a brochure and made plans to head towards our stay for the night, Camping Tornio.
We have rested here for a while, Liz catching up her journal, and me happily whittling away some wood with my new knife. We have to make some plans tonight as we aren't sure exactly what to do next.

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