Rovaniemi

Rovaniemi – a town of 10,000 in northern Finland, most famous for its proximity to the Arctic Circle and the home of St Nick himself. Degree of rurality – 2 Chinese restaurants.

Here are the points:

1 point goes to the temperature. Well, I guess this goes down to timing more than anything. We're here in early October & the daily high for the 1st day was 2'C and 2nd day an incredibly tepid 5'c!! Needless to say there were sub-zero mornings.

2 points go to the Alvar Aalto buildings. Practically very guide book/website you come across talking about Rovaniemi popints out the greatworks of Alvar Aalto, the local examples being the City Hall, Provincial library, and the Lappin House. Unfortunately I (along with the rest of my trip mates) failed to appreciate the greatness of such architecture.

3 points go to the lack of attractions. For those who know me you'd have witnessed my stacks of A3 printed street maps of places that I'm travelling too. The lack of general information on Rovaniemi is best summed in my inability to find a digital copy of a street map online or from any guide books. I had to resort to stitching together 4 maps that I screen-grabbed from Google Maps. Further still, this map only had 7 things highlighted – the 3 abovesaid Alvar Aalto buildings, the railway station, bus terminal, the Jätkänkynttilä Bridge with its eternal flame, Artikum (the Arctic Centre), the world's most northern McDonald's, and, off the map, Santa Claus Village. It is definitley more than en0uogh to cover all these within a 24-hour period. We had 36.

4 points o to Artikum, the Arctic Centre. For those who are not fortunate enough to catch the real Aurora Borealis (Northern Lights) this Centre is probably the next best thing. With a 12Euro entry fee you're free to roam around all 2 floors of exhibitions. There are plenty to see – traditional life of the Sami people, traditional costumes, and of course, a (fake) Northern Light show that goes on a loop every 5 minutes or so. It looks pretty real (but what do I know, I've never seen the real thing) apart from the fox-like creature running around and the Sami people kicking the Lights around.

5 points go to Santa Claus Village. Ok, so it takes a bit of travelling to (the hourly No.8 bus takes you right to the door of the Village. Return ticket: 6.4Euros. Journey time: approx. ½ hour) and it is mostly devoid of people/visitors (we were there for about 5 hours and there were only about a dozen visitors or so) and it's pretty kitchy in terms of the stuff on offer and the photo-op with Santa is a big cash cow, all in all it is still pretty cool. Entry to the Village is free though most of the buildings there were souvenir shops. Santa was nice (as you'd expect) and the prices of the postcards (.80euro each big or small, plus another .80Euro per stamp) and official photos were not exorbitant (the 4 of us are splitting a set of 5 4R with cards for 25Euros). The food situation, however, was a bit dire. The cafes on site were pretty empty (ie food was probably not fresh) so we ventured across the highway and ate at the petrol station instead (see 9 points).

6 points go to the long train rides. For our Helsinki-Rovaniemie return trips we took 2 overnight trains. The 1st train up was in absolute luxury. Not only we had our own ensuite cabins, the toilet-shower conversion was so much fun that we even made our own amatuer instruction video for it (sorry, no nude shots). So they were a bit long (roughly 12 hours each way) but with some sleep and the prospect of Aurora Borealis the time simply flies. I guess playing Uno also helped a great deal.

7 points go to the world's northern most McDonald's. I'm not sure if it's a Finland-wide thing or if it was just that particular McD (I'm guessing the former) but they had some different burgers (on special promo I think. My Finnish is not quite up to scratch). The most special thing was of course the “I've visited the northest McDonald's in the world” postcard that I managed to from behind the counter and posters of the same effects that literally littered the place. Not that I eat Meccas much these days but still it was a pretty cool highlight. The shopping centre across the road also lights up to the effects of the Aurora Borealis at night.

8 points go to seeing the Aurora Borealis, or more acurately, the prospect of seeing it. I've read somewhere that on average the northern part of Scandinavia have around 200 lights shows of the Aurora Borealis every year, with March, April, Spetmber & October being the peak seasons (why do you think we're here at this time of the year?). Even in the middle of town in Rovaniemi it averages a light show every other day. Unfortunately we didn't experience any on our only night there but catching a simulation (see 4 points) was pretty close. Here's hoping we manage to catch some on our train trip back down (yes, I typed this while on the train trip back down to Helsinki).

9 points go to the lunch we had at the petrol station across the highway from Santa Claus Village. Aside from the fact that we were cold and hungry, the food was actually rather good. We had our regular Kanacaesarsalaati, followed up with Pasta Bolognese and the local dish of poron (yes, we ate Rudolf). The poron on mash potatoes were absolutely delicious – it encaptured tenderness and juciness all in one. Oh my God, I'm drooling again...

Unfortauntely the points only go up to 9 for Rovaniemi. There simply isn't any more to blog about/award points for. We'll see you in Art Nouveau-central - Riga, Latvia - next.