Burning with Optimism Pipe Fire

At 8:00, Friday, our daily meeting about upcoming days begins over a table full of breakfast served to us at the guest house in Inari, Villa Lanca. Since only real schedule we have is to be in Helsinki by Wednesday to pick up our passports with Russian visas, we decided to take time traveling southward, choosing stops as we pleased. We are also fortunate we have so many days on Eurail-pass left, as some days we had used were not stamped. Our first destination is Rovaniemi, the capital of Lapland. The town of less than 50,000 people, is located on the line of arctic circle and is known for tourism attractions including Santa Village and glass egloos for spending romantic winter nights under aurora borealis. None of these guidebook suggestions turned us on, but the midsummer-night festival with folk music appeared attractive enough.

We arrived the center of the city, and there was nothing about it that resembled happy elves. We were surprised how run-down it was, with most of buildings closed, and torn down. We waited for the midnight madness with anticipation, but the event was not as big as it was said to be; a bonfire on a riverside, and a dozen elder couples dancing in a large tent near by to Finnish country music. It was certainly not worth the admission of €17 per person, and so it ended up being a bit of a disappointing weekend.

During our 2-week stay in Finland, it was such a coincidence that one of our friends was in a remote Lapland town, shooting a documentary. We met Jessica, a young, talented film director from New York, in 2008 in Japan while shooting her first documentary film, "Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo (2009)" through Sahe's brother who was involved in the production. She is now shooting for her new film (for detail please visit her website), which focuses on lives and culture of reindeer herders, and she has been filming on and off since a year ago, in climate conditions unimaginable. Although we were hoping to visit her,  we were not sure how acceptable it is to intrude her working site, especially with unpredictable shooting schedule and a remote location only reachable by car. On the day we were planning to leave southbound, she told us that she can meet up with us in Rovaniemi. Finally, a small ray of sun has beamed us at the end of the dark weekend on arctic circle.


To be continued...