Santa Claus is staying in town
Trip Start
Aug 01, 2005
1
86
110
Trip End
Nov 22, 2005
Rovaniemi, Lapland, Finland
Friday, October 28, 2005
Santa Claus is staying in town
We had another early start today, (I really need to speak to my travel agent), as we were flying to Rovaniemi, in the north of Finland, and the capital of Lapland. Fee and I each had a reason for heading so far north. For me it was to see the Aurora Borealis, also known as the Northern Lights. This natural phenomenon turns the sky dashing shades of red and green and blue and yellow at night, like a laser show. I had seen photos and always wanted to view this nighttime display. In my research I saw that late October was the best time to try and see this and was the reason for our zigzag itinerary all over Europe.
For Fee it was her chance to meet the real Santa Claus. Rovaniemi is the official home to all things Santa Claus (upon which all its marketing is based) and just eight kilometres north of the city, at the point where you cross the Arctic Circle is Santa Claus village. The real life home of Mr Claus.
So we had two different reasons to come to Rovaniemi but we were both excited. After landing at the Official Santa Claus airport, checking in at the Santa Claus Hotel and going to the Santa Claus Tourism Information centre I was beginning to think that the marketing team in this city was really pinning all its hopes on the big fat red man. Unfortunately the lady at the visitors centre had bad news for me. Though viewing of the Aurora Borealis had been good for most of the week, the weather had changed and there would be no chance of us witnessing it during our two nights here. Firstly it was too cloudy, too snowy and too foggy (clear skies are needed) but it was also going to be too warm. Too warm. It was minus five degrees. Three months before the middle of winter. And they called it too warm. We had a million layers on and were wearing thermals and they thought it was too warm.
Whilst the locals were ready to head down to the beach, Fee and I were having trouble standing upright. The sidewalks were incredibly slippery as they were covered with ice and snow but in "the heat" they were melting making it hard to walk on. We would take a few steps and then sort of slide along in a kind of Michael Jackson moonwalk for the rest of the way. Occasionally we would stumble and one of us would have to reach out and prevent the other from slamming onto the footpath. I had to resort to a sort of Cliff Young shuffle to prevent myself from skidding. Fee kindly described my style as if "I had a pole wedged up my ass."
It wasn't just us having trouble, many of the locals were slipping and sliding, whilst some found it easier to slide along like they ice skates on. For cars it was worse, their tyres would lose grip and often when they attempted to drive off they slid for the first few metres. Worst of all were the brave souls attempting to cycle. They were unable to brake, found it almost impossible to steer and were very cold. Finland's Funniest Home Videos could have captured a lot of footage.
Eventually we made it to the bus stop to go to Santa's Village. Santa originally lived far further north but they found few visitors would travel that far so they moved it as far south as possible, just metres north of the official North Pole. In 1950 Mrs Roosevelt, wife of the US president came up to check it all out and now half a million people come each year to see Santa and his village and the town of Rovaniemi get to cash in. I guess Santa comes to Australia to visit us every year so it would be rude not to drop by his home at least once.
Fee was jumping around like a little kid on Christmas morning as we entered the village. Basically the village consisted of lots of shops, Santa's workshop and the official Santa's Claus post office. Our first stop was to visit the man himself. As we were in between summer and winter there were few tourists about and we didn't have to wait. We entered his office and had a chat about this and that. We then had our photo taken by the world's tallest elf, which we paid 19 Euros for. Nineteen Euros for a picture of us with Santa. For that sort of money I was expecting Leonardo da Vinci to be commissioned to do a portrait of us with him. Oh well at least Fee was happy.
We wandered through all the different shops. It was surprising as none of them really sold Christmas items; they were mainly Finnish or Lappish souvenirs. I told Fee that the stuff here would be overpriced and we decided to buy our purchases back in Rovaniemi. We headed off for the twenty minute walk to Santa's Reindeer Farm but with the wind blowing hard it was too cold and we decided to bus back to town to explore.
In 2006, Rovaniemi will lay claim to being the biggest city in Europe as it expands its municipality. We covered the whole city in about thirteen minutes. I am thinking it would take longer to cover Paris or London than Rovaniemi but whom I am to argue with the official city of Santa Claus. As mentioned we were in Not Season so there were no tours or activities on that we could do. There is one museum but we chose to leave that for tomorrow or we would have nothing to do. Unfortunately we could find no gift shops in our travels. I would have thought it a town cashing on so heavily on Santa Claus there we would be plenty of opportunity to buy gifts but alas there was none. We would have to head back to Santa Village tomorrow to buy the items we should have bought today. At least we were filling our day tomorrow because there was precious little else to do in Rovaniemi in October. Especially with no Northern Lights. Doh. Damn that warm weather. Now where did I put my beanie, gloves and scarf?
