At the end of November, Tatjana, Annemarie, and I went to Lapland, a place that had been on my list for a while. We first had to fly to Helsinki, where we met Annemarie, who already spent a day in Helsinki the day, and then another one to get to Rovaniemi. Arriving there in the early afternoon, it was already dark, as the sun rises at 10 a.m. and sets again at 2 p.m. Anyways, after taking the airport bus to the Hostel Café Koti and checking in there, we walked through the city center and, in the evening, went on a Northern Lights Safari. However, we weren’t able to see any!

The following day, we went to Santa Claus Village and walked around the area. And while some of the attractions there are especially nice for kids, everything was expensive and commercial. However, we stayed there until it got dark to see the village also at night, strolled one last time around the area, and took the bus back to the city. In the evening, we had dinner at Cafe & Bar 21 but went right back to the hostel because, to be honest, there is simply not much going on in the evening in Rovaniemi.

On our last day, we first had breakfast at the hostel again and spent the afternoon at Arktikum, a museum about the history of Rovaniemi and Lapland. Back at the hostel, we used the remaining time to write postcards before flying home again. After another stopover in Helsinki on the way to Copenhagen, back there we waited for our train back to Odense, which got canceled. Thus, we first had to take the bus to another train station on the way, and then caught the right train from there back to Odense. And to sum up our trip: although I can say, I’ve been to Lapland and seen Santa Claus’ home now, I wouldn’t go there again and would also not even recommend it. Because despite Rovaniemi being one of the ugliest cities I’ve ever been to, everything was super expensive and commercialized there and not worth the money or the time.