7th Nov (Sun) - Rovaniemi, Lapland

PRELUDE

Friday - I should've checked the map of Finland/ Lapland before I went on board the plane. Coz I'd thought that Tampere was part of Rovaniemi when it was in fact a different city altogether. So when the plane made a pitstop at Tampere airport to pick up more passengers, I alighted the plane and happily (plus unknowingly) went out of the customs and stopped for a toilet break. It was in the toilet that I heard my name being mentioned over the airport PA system and was asked to proceed to security control asap. Thank god I was still in the airport and ran over asap. The airport staff were pretty amused, especially the air stewardess who was at the door, greeting me for the 2nd time when I boarded the plane again. Phew! What a close shave.

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The average day time temperature was about -7 to -10.5 degrees. Night time ranged from -11 to -15. Still bearable for now except my face felt frozen. Well, kind of. Just exaggerating it a little.

It happened to be a holiday yesterday, so almost all shops were closed. So I decided to visit the Artikum and to understand more about the Sami culture and the arctic circle. That was how I got to know that the word "Arctic" actually derived from a Greek word. And it meant the "land of the great bear" as the constellation of the great bear could always been seen in the north.



As for today, I took the Santa Express bus 8 from the train station (see pix below - which happened to be less than 200m from the guesthouse I'm staying in) and went straight for the so-called "official" Santa Claus Village, situated right in the Arctic Circle.



Well for starters, I could have gotten the Arctic Circle stamp on my passport and/or have the official certificate to show that I was at the Arctic Circle. But since there was a bunch of Japanese tourists queuing for it, I decided to come back later instead (which I didn't in the end).





The Santa Claus Post Office was kinda cool. The staff were dressed like adult elves and there were displays of letters to Santa from kids all over the world, including one super long one which the staff had to roll up into a scroll and put it on display as well. Most of the letters from kids were like "I've been good this year...blah blah blah". But there were some that asked really sensible and cute questions like "how many helpers do you have", "don't you ever go for a holiday", "were your helpers really elves" and etc.





Though I didn't send a letter to Santa nor did I purchase a request for Santa's letter (which cost about 7 euros), I did get my hands on some postcards from the post office, get them stamped and posted them back to my address in SG. I would love to get more postcards but they were rather expensive - like 2 SGD per card. So I got limited choice but to settle for only a handful. Lesson learned. Next time, bring your own postcards and just buy the stamps and get them posted from the post office.



Next stop, the Santa Claus' office - which turned out to be just a small studio which you could take a picture with Mr. Santa Claus. There were several options for you to choose what output you want, either it was a postcard set of 5, or photo saved in a Sony thumbdrive or a large print out. Since the large printout was the "cheapest" of them all, I opted for that. And yet, it still cost me 25 Euros. No kidding. This would be the one and final time I would ever take a photo with any Santa Claus.





After wandering around Santa Claus Village for some time, I decided to head back to the guesthouse and retire for the night.