This weekend I decided to take Friday and Monday off and head up to Luleå in the northern part of Sweden. This is the place where I went to university and also where my sister Viktoria lives with her husband Janne. I almost did not make it due to a strike at SAS which of course started the same day I was leaving. Thankfully there is one more air line operating this route and it was good enough to run extra flights for us unfortunate people who got stuck. This air line also had a very suitable slogan, “FlyNordic – the way it should be”. I didn’t notice it on the way there but when I went back to Stockholm I saw it everywhere. They also had a big poster saying: “The best thing about Stockholm is that it is so easy to get back home again.” He he, they are not really impressed by Stockholm up here. Good reason to try to practice that accent I picked up while living here for five years… 🙂
This is a very good season to visit Luleå. The temperature is about the same as in Stockholm but it is light all night long, the trees are just turning green and there are no mosquitoes yet. I still can not get used to watching the sun set when you are finishing dinner around 10.30 pm and then see how it is coming back up just a few hours later. Fantastic! There is something very special about the light up here (accept that there is no light at all in the winter…) and the way it affects your life. In the summer everyone wants to spend as much time as possible awake and outside compared to winter when you want to get indoors as soon as you can. Life is just different in the summer, people have more energy and seem more positive and happy. Winter in Luleå has its charm though, the crisp air, the snow and of course the amazing northern lights. The picture shows the view from my sisters apartment in the middle of the night in May.