Finland by www.born2travel.it

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27. 07. 2001 Kemi (FINLAND) What a wonderful night! I've never slept so well on an interrail! Shut in a delightful, clean little railway station, warm, with the North Sea washing the fjord and lit by the sun. That sun so special that never dies! Us curled up in our sleeping bags. Tonight we're supposed to sleep at Kemi station in order to catch the connection to Rovaniemi in the morning! It'll be another night of adventure; last year I'd have worried and been anxious all day, this year I almost enjoy it when you don't know what will happen to you the next day! In Kemi I meet a girl: Julia, very pretty, the only calm one of her group of drunks in this place where you don't know how to spend your evenings since you're in the middle of nowhere! We confessed to Julia that we'd spend the whole night at the station.

Everyone told us to be careful because the lads get drunk in the evening and look for fights, especially today, since it's Friday night. Wolfy, Philipp and I decided to stand guard all night. After a while the blond Austrian zips himself into his sleeping bag and disappears into the arms of Morpheus. At four I collapse too, literally dead with cold. When at 5.30 I open my eyes again I see poor Wolfy surrounded by a tide of cigarette butts at his feet. He'd stayed awake on watch all night. What a star! In the end we take the comfortable train to Rovaniemi and fall asleep at once; we wake up just in time to get off, purely by chance! By bus we head to Napapiiri, the famous Santa's town. Here the Christmas spirit is in the air all year round. What pleased me more than the village itself was seeing the line of the Arctic Circle: 66° 33' 07".

A nice game of football, Portitalia versus Austria, keeps us busy for the rest of a very pleasant afternoon.

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