North-Eastern Scandinavia

Travelling comfortably on the Swiss motorways (San Bernardino), a short stretch of the Austrian ones and finally the German ones, we make a technical stop in Nuremberg and use the afternoon to visit the beautiful city and taste local specialities based on fried cheese and würstel. In the morning we're back on the road, destination Travemünde, the most interesting seaside resort in northern Germany. It's August and in the town there's the festival of San Lorenzo: a feast of stalls with every good thing, and then music, celebration and beer...lots and lots of beer. At night we board ourselves and our car on the Finnlines ferry which in 36 very comfortable hours takes us to Helsinki, where we disembark in the early morning to reach the Hotel Katajanokka, a beautiful conversion of a prison. The visit to the city takes a couple of days.

Helsinki is beautiful especially from the sea; indeed we enjoy it at sunset using one of the many cruises that visit the archipelago. Here is true Finland, as you usually imagine it: little islands on whose jagged coasts little buildings face, in which every Finn owns a smoke sauna. During our stay in Helsinki, we take the opportunity to go to the outskirts, to Vantaa, and watch Finland-Italy in basketball. In the whole arena we'll be about ten Italians and we're struck by the education, respect and cordiality of this people, who, shouting joyfully, cheer for their team with absolute loyalty. Back on the road, towards Savonlinna and the lake region. We stay in a nice lodge with a view of the most beautiful castle in Scandinavia. Unfortunately the weather is inclement and forces us to skip the boat trip on the Saimaa canals, the real reason we'd come here.

And so, off we go, north to Oulu, a very lively little town on the Gulf of Bothnia. I have wonderful saunas and I'm amazed that in every part of the centre there's free wi-fi: the municipality provides it. We set off again with the usual thrill we feel on the day we cross the Arctic Circle. This time it happens at Napapiiri, a few km north of Rovaniemi. There's a bit of disappointment because the area seems like an immense commercial fairground where a photo with Santa Claus (who seems to be at home here) costs 17 euro. We limit ourselves to a few souvenirs, fill up with petrol and get ready, all happy, to cover the next 300 km that separate us from Lake Inari. It's a fabulous road, among low birches, rolling up and down over little hills. In four hours the weather changed about ten times: from rain, to storm, to sun.

So we enjoyed a couple of very distinct and therefore very rare rainbows. Reindeer by the roadside (and also in the middle, watch out) keep us company for the whole journey: the white ones are the most beautiful, but you meet them in many colours and some are majestic. Inari is a small village on the river. We visit the museum of Lapp culture, probably the most important in the world. The visit takes an afternoon; in particular the outdoor part is a lovely long walk in the woods with breathtaking views of the lake. The following day the idea of visiting Kirkenes attracts us, only 200 km from Inari, the last Norwegian outpost on the border with Russia. We arrive in the town at midday; it's raining and a freezing wind blows from the Arctic Sea. The town centre is deserted, there isn't a single open venue.

Only at the tourist office do we find a small group of Italians just off the Fjord mail boat, which ends its route here before returning to Bergen. They too, like us, are shocked by the unreal environment they find before them. We go back to Inari and in the hotel, in the evening, we eat one of the best pizzas of recent years, just 4000 km from Naples. In reality the Sami have a certain familiarity with the wood-fired oven, with which they make a bread very similar to pizza. I enjoyed mine with tomato, blue cheese, peaches and reindeer meat. From Inari, on a winding road, we cross into Sweden and stay in Gallivare, an old mining town. Here we stay in a beautiful castle under the mountain and discover that the ownership of this jewel is Italian.

From Gallivare begins a very long drive on the Inlands Vagan, the Swedish inland road which, as a first stop, leads us south of the Arctic Circle, to Mora (after a technical stop at Stramsund, an anonymous town on the road) on the shores of Lake Siljan. The lake and the villages that surround it are a pure example of inland Sweden, which, among other things, originated here. We buy Dala wooden horses and visit the Falun mining site, where until a few decades ago copper was extracted. From the residues of the extraction, here they produced a colour for painting the façades of houses (Falu red) and every wooden house is the same colour, with white cornices and green lawns around. The lake is always present. From Falun, back to Mora and then again on the 45 towards the Øresund bridge, on which we say goodbye to Sweden to enter Denmark.

A technical stop at Maribo, in the south of the country, and in the morning a short ferry crossing takes us into Germany. We cross it from north to south and make our (last) stop in Heidelberg. The liveliness of this German town on the Neckar river with its castle will be hard to forget. Through the St. Gotthard tunnel, we begin our last, sad journey home.