ÖTILLÖ World Championship: The afterstory
Since initially it looked like Trista was going to have to head home immediately after the race, we started our planning without her. Bergen in Norway? Abisko in the Arctic Circle? Both ruled out because we only had 3-4 days and nights, and the travel to get to those places was at least half a day each way. We had Åre suggested to us, which looked lovely, and Finland was close enough that we could pop over on a boat and get a quick little look around.
Before we'd made any progress on a decision, though, Trista found out that she could stay through the end of the week like we were. She was on board for adventure, and she wanted ADVENTURE. She wanted something she couldn't see anywhere else. And she decided she wanted NORTHERN LIGHTS and SLED DOGS.
Unfortunately it's not exactly the right time of year for either of those, but the best chance we'd have for them looked like it would probably be in Abisko. When I told her we'd ruled that out for being so far away, she pointed out there was a plane that flew there from Stockholm! That would greatly reduce the travel time!
Further investigation showed that there WAS a plane, but it flew so infrequently as to be completely useless for our purposes. BUT. There was a night train!
After an emergency planning session in our Casco Bay AdorkaFika HQ, wherein Marcus said "That sounds amazing, let me change my flight plans and join you!", we booked a sleeper car from Stockholm to Abisko on Tuesday, and a sleeper car from Abisko to Stockholm on Friday! This was happening!
We quickly discovered there are basically 3-4 places to stay in the Abisko area, if you're not tent camping, and the fanciest one (basically a hotel) was booked for the time we'd be there. We got worried, but fortunately we were able to book some rooms at the hostel next to the hotel. And the hostel had HUSKIES! Sure, there's no snow and no sledding, but surely we could at least visit the huskies, right?! Fingers crossed.
So we stayed in our random and assorted assigned lodging on Uto the night after the race, got up in the morning to meet all the racers and staff and volunteers for an amazing breakfast, then hopped on the ferry back to the mainland. We were sad that our swimrun adventure was coming to an end, but super excited for our Abisko adventure!
And an adventure it was, from the beginning. First an adventure in public transportation. Through a convoluted series of buses, subways, ubers, and trains, we made it to the airport, stowed some luggage there so we wouldn't have to bring everything with us, then made it to Uppsala, where we finally got on our night train to Abisko!
The train was so much fun. I haven't been on a sleeper train since I was a kid, and while everything seemed very compact, it was a fun adventure, and Matt barely slept because he was so busy staring at everything out the train window.
The train took us all the way to the Abisko Östra station where we disembarked and had a short walk to the hostel. My first time in a hostel! It was exactly what we needed, which was a bed and a shower, and it was so much fun getting to chat with the various (much younger) people who were having amazing adventures of their own in the area.
We arrived before we were able to check in, so we stowed our luggage at the main house and took a little stroll around the little town. In addition to the hotel and the hostel, it had a train station, a bus stop, a grocery store/candy factory, and a shaman. Exactly as much as any town needs.
The food options in town were the lodge, which only served breakfast and dinner, and as we came to find out, basically only if you were staying in the lodge AND had a reservation, and the grocery store.
We were starving, and it was lunchtime, so we did the always-dangerous shopping-while-starving. We got an AMAZING array of foods (and candies), and ate our spoils outside in the 50 degree sunshine.
I may have just been really hungry, but I think it was probably the best meal I've ever had.
We had chatted with the owner when we checked in about where we might hike that day, but it turned out our "walk along the river" plan had a 30 minute walk before we could even walk along the river. We were exhausted from the race and the travel, and couldn't really wrap our minds around that, so instead we went in search of HUSKIES!
We found the area where they lived, and made friends with them through the fence. One of the employees came over and we asked if we could come inside, and she said we would want to wear old clothes we didn't care about, because they might jump up on us and it was muddy, etc. We discussed when we might come back, pet more dogs through the fence, and then said, "Wait, what if we just take off our coats right now and it's fine if our under-things get muddy?" And suddenly they opened the gates and we entered Husky Paradise!
I missed my dogs so much, and had been petting any dogs whose owners looked understanding during our trip, but just having a chance to hug on all the dogs, and especially the younger pups who were born at Christmastime. Just.. wonderful.
Then we ended up taking an unintentional but very necessary nap. Especially since we knew we were going to stay up to see if maybe by some miracle, there might be some Northern Light action.
After naps, we went up to the lodge to see if maybe we could get in for dinner. This was before we knew it wasn't reservations suggested, it was reservations required. So, yeah, no openings, no dinner at the lodge for us. Which meant back to the grocery store to buy something we could make in the hostel kitchen.
Then, finishing up some souvenir shopping at the little lodge store, they told us that they'd had an opening, and we could eat dinner there! Again, maybe we were just hungry and tired, but this felt like the best news we'd ever received.
And it was worth it, because the food was AMAZING. Everyone else got the reindeer filet, but I needed a break from meat, and got the eldost salad, and it was so good. Plus appetizers. Plus 4 desserts. We walked away from dinner a LITTLE less behind on calories.
We were about to walk out the lodge door to walk back to the hostel when Trista suggested we use the lodge lounge area, which was more comfy and warm and spacious than the hostel kitchen, to spread out our map and figure out tomorrow's hike.
We were deeply engrossed in our planning session when the Northern Lights Alarm went off. We'd been told about this phenomenon, but didn't realize how effective it was. Basically someone ran in front door and yelled, "It's happening!" and then ran back out. And then everyone ran out after them. And that's how, even though it was very early in the season and unlikely, we saw an amazing Northern Lights show on our first night in Abisko.
Huskies and Northern Lights. Exactly what we wanted out of this trip, already.
We stared at the sky and took pictures and videos until it died down and we were super cold, then went to bed.
The next morning, on a tip from our sleeper train porter, we caught a bus from Abisko out to the trail head for Trollsjön (literally The Troll Lake).
We really had no idea what to expect, other than a lake at the turnaround point. It was a beautiful ~8 mile total out and back that took us about 6 hours. Our legs were actually feeling really good, and we just took it nice and easy and went out to every scenic overlook and climbed up onto rocks and took 9 billion photos and videos.
Other than coexisting with one very large and annoying tour group for half an hour or so, it was just a really pleasant journey and stunningly beautiful.
When we got to the lake, we had to decide whether the bathing suits we'd worn under our clothes were going to be used or not!
A glacial lake in the Arctic Circle in September promised to be very cold. But hey, when were we ever going to get this chance again?
So into the water we went!
It was a very short swim, because it was a very cold lake, but I'm so glad we did it!
Then back out and into all the warm clothes that we had been shedding as the day went on and warmed up.
We sunned ourselves on a rock next to the lake and ate the various snacks we had squirreled away in our packs, and then headed back toward our trail head.
We were a little more focused on the way back, so maybe HALF the number of stop and photos.
One issue with the planning of this hike was there was exactly one bus coming out, the 8:30am we'd been on, and then two buses coming back, one at 10am or so, which was too early for us to get the full hike in, an then the next one wasn't until 5pm or so. We weren't sure how long the hike was going to take, but we were pretty sure we'd be done long before that bus. And there's nothing else around the trail head. There was a train station that we could have walked to, but it was a long walk to get to the town the train station was in, and that would be on top of our long hike. So we figured worst case, we sat around and were very hungry for a while before we got to go back to the hostel. But we ALSO had a phone number for a "taxi service" that we'd gotten from Therese that we were going to try out!
We also briefly considered just walking to Norway, which wasn't all that far from where we were! But a little too far for our purposes at that point.
So on the way back from the lake, in a spot we had signal, Marcus called the taxi service, and they said they could absolutely come pick us up, just let them know when we were close to the trail head. We were super excited about this development!
And sure enough, it took us a while to get through to the taxi service as we navigated the last few miles, but we managed to get through, and they came right to the trail head and drove us back home! When we asked her where we might eat, since the lodge had no open reservations for dinner, she stopped by the Abisko Turiststation on the drive back, and she ran in to ask if the restaurant there had any availability.
They did not, unfortunately, so we had her drop us back at the grocery store, and we had another don't-shop-when-you're-hungry scavenging dinner. I don't think we got any photos of this one, but it featured more cheese, sausages, and olives, several kinds of cup-o-noodles cups, crackers and hummus, a hunk of seasoned pork, and a billion kinds of cookies and candies.
It was ridiculous, but so much fun.
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After some showers, we had another non-optional nap that took us up to sunset. We headed over to the lodge to get some hot tea, and while we were drinking that and chatting, the Northern Lights Alarm went off again!
Two nights in Abisko. Amazing Northern Lights both nights. We were expecting nothing, and ended up with so much. On top of such a crazy week and a great race, it was just very emotional.
Then into bed for our last night in the hostel.
Matt had what was arguably an even more active week than we had our first week in Sweden, with all sorts of walking and running and sherpaing and hiking, and his feet were feeling pretty rough at this point. When we discussed our potential plans for Friday morning, he made the tough but smart decision to not do one last hike, to try to get his feet to recover a bit.
The rest of us decided to get one last short hike in, specifically the one we'd thought about doing the first day we were there, out and back along the river. The issue being the trailhead was at Abisko Turiststation, which was ~5k from the hostel, which means 10k to even get TO the trail, leaving us not much time to actually do the hike.
Fortunately even though it was just after 7am, when Marcus called our taxi service friend, she was able to come pick us up after finishing up her last schoolkid dropoff! (After a delicious breakfast of microwave quiche and tiny Swedish pancakes.) She even said she could come pick us up afterward, and we set a time for pickup. That saved us a bunch of time, and allowed us to see more of the actual river trail!
Which was beautiful. A completely different experience than our hike the day before, with beautiful striated rocks and shockingly powerful river rapids.
Again, the photos-per-kilometer ratio was very impressive, and we ended up going a little longer than we should have, trying to get to a bridge that was on the map as our turnaround point.
We DID get to the bridge, but then we had get back to the trailhead and didn't have much time to do so.
We ended up in a very similar situation to the race, needing to go 4k in about 30 minutes! AHH, flashbacks!
So no photos on the way back, and even a little running! Which was awkward in puffy jackets, so the puffy jackets had to come off and be tied around the waist.
We didn't QUITE make it, but we called our taxi friend and let her know, and I called Matt and let him know that we were going to be getting back to the hostel RIGHT at the 11am checkout time.
In the end it all worked out, and we checked out of our rooms, made a giant pile of our luggage, then ate the microwave pizzas we had purchased but not eaten the day before. And various other snacks. And then left a LOT of snacks on the "for general consumption" shelves at the hostel. Hopefully someone else enjoyed our never-shop-when-hungry spoils.
Then we wheeled our luggage back to the train station right on time, only to find our train was delayed. I wasn't sure what that meant for our connecting train in Boden, since the time between arrival and departure was less than 5 minutes, but it turns out that kind of thing happens all the time, and it just meant the delayed train went faster once it stated, to make up for the time! Public transportation is wild, man.
The rest of the trip was mostly trains and buses and waiting, switching to our sleeper train in Boden, then taking that all the way to the Stockholm Central Station. We hooked up with Coach Nico and Cat and the kids for one last fika while there, and then we took the Arlanda Express back to the airport and hung out there for a few hours until our flight home.
We all flew to JFK together, and then we hugged and parted ways, an amazing 2 week epic adventure completed.
It was such a fun, exhausting, stellar trip, and I can't believe everything we accomplished and enjoyed, and I can't wait to do it all again. It was the perfect parachute between an amazing race and the harsh reality (even though we really missed dogs and kids) of returning home. Vacations with friends! We should do that more often.
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