Across the Border
Since my time in Slovakia, I have been obsessed with border
crossings, and now I have to cross one each day to go to work. Each day I wake
up in Sweden and go to work in Finland.
It is slightly annoying living in Sweden because they’re in fact an hour
behind Finland (but it’s worth it to lay in bed and watch the Northern Lights),
so our time is always well out. It’s in fact 10,30pm as I write this where I
live, but we have to work on Finnish time so it’s actually 11,30pm. And, to
really complicate things at home, it’s 9,30pm. So much to remember.
A couple of nights ago we decided to take a walk. We had
nothing to do once we finished work, so after dinner we went to Sweden to pick
up some shopping. We’d arranged to meet a friend, and we couldn’t be bothered
walking three quarters of the way home only to head back into Finland. Instead
we decided to take a short cut. Knackered from a day’s training, and the lack
of melatonin in our system, we decided our best option was to cut out the
bridge altogether. We’d walk across the river.
We slid down the bank, knee deep in snow. The river is
totally frozen, and the ice won’t crack with us walking on it- there are
snowmobiles that go up and down. Part of the river will be used for our Christmas
Day trips. Once we hit the bottom, there was no path where we were walking and
the snow continued being up to our knees. I went at the back so the girls in
front did most of the work getting rid of the snow- thanks to my boots and
trousers, I wasn’t remotely cold! We walked across the river finding bits and
pieces that were lumpy and bumpy to walk across. Legs pushing through the deep
snow, and eventually came to the impenetrable bank on the other side. We
followed the footsteps up it to the road. Out of breath and sweating I dragged
myself to the café where I chose a hot chocolate.
You expect to feel cold, see. So you do silly things like
order hot chocolate after tons of exercise, when you’re sweating. What you
could really use is a coke or a bottle of water, but no. You choose the hot
chocolate. You sit staring at it, waiting for it to cool, but it doesn’t. The
thing is whilst outside is cold; inside is boiling (to the point that we
disconnected one of our heaters because the heat is too much) you are never at
a happy medium; you’re either too hot or too cold.
We didn’t attempt to cross the river on the way home. We
walked across the bridge, absolutely shattered. Snapping because we were too
tired to walk any further, I’d been hanging my head the whole way home, but
each night I’ve been looking at the sky as we walk home to spot the Aurora. It
gets dark so early here that there’s a chance we can see it from 8pm, and the
sky was clear, the stars were shining. There had been no snow and it had been
hovering around -9C all day. I was so convinced in the morning, that whilst
working I downloaded an app to check our chances, but it said 2 and low next to
it. So I told the girls it was unlikely but we might see it.
See it we did. There it was hanging in the sky above
Finland. I got excited and danced around. We slid down another bank, now thigh
deep in thick snow, not even thinking about how we’d get back up. We stood on
the river bank cooing and trying to take photos of it.
We managed to pass one of the work vans which brought us
home. We went into our little garden armed with cameras, wearing pyjamas with
snowsuits over the top and watched the lights. There was a thick band, and a
couple of smaller ones in the sky. Lines came down and I really thought we
might see them dance, but we didn’t. It was okay tho’ because when we got fed
up all we needed to do was switch the lights off in our room, and leave the
curtains open.
I spent the night laid in bed watching the Aurora until it
disappeared, I think I will forever be fascinated by it.
I am already cold, too. Very nice pictures, though. Your day seems to be full of bright and pleasant emotions. I just cannot imagine me crossing the border everyday. It must be a time-consuming сommute. Ok, I should finish now and start to writemyessay with a cup of a sweet hot chocolate.
ReplyDeleteThank you for such a nice post!
I can't decide if this is spam or not? what the hell is writemyessay?!
Deleteanyway, yes i think the commute to walk- whilst cold and time consuming was the best part of my day.