Norway (including escaping Sweden)

Yeah, I'm in Norway. On Saturday, after a delicious breakfast of small sausages, scrambled eggs and Swedish meatballs, I attended at Kiruna train station again to get a bus to Norway. There were still no trains and the bus took over 5 hours to go 175km. However, this included two trips in special snowplough convoys. When the weather is awful, the cars line up ready to be led through the crazy snow by snowploughs. This involves a lot of waiting and a lot of following other cars, but it is quite cool. In Norway you have to have special winter tyres which have metal studs in and allow driving on pretty dangerous conditions. Norway is very snowy.

There's not really too much else to say. I'm probably learning interesting things all the time, mostly about snow, ice, cross-country skiing, military systems and political inactivity in Scandinavian countries. Also, I've seen a very interesting German WW2-era transport plane (Junkers Ju-52) which spent some 40 years in the fjord before being pulled out, shipped around a bit, and brought back to Bjerkvik for restoration. It's very cool. In similar news, tomorrow (Monday) I plan to visit the Narvik Peace Museum, which is all about war. Other important points include: underfloor heating in a bathroom is one of the greatest inventions known to man; you can't get rid of snow, you can only move it around; a chair/walking frame/sled is called a spark and it allows quick-sliding progress to shops, cafes and other local attractions; Bullfinches are NOT Robins; the whole of Kiruna needs to be moved because of the iron ore mining which is undermining the foundations of the city; the Kiruna to Narvik train line was developed to allow the ore to be transferred easily to a saltwater port that doesn't freeze in winter; and Ju-52s are made predominantly of aluminium, look like train carriages with wings and were affectionately known by the Wehrmacht as "Tante Ju."

I'm hoping to possibly do some cross-country skiing whilst here (despite the length of the trip being somewhat shortened by delay), but am otherwise simply enjoying walking about in exceptionally thick snow, having lengthy discussions and drinking far more coffee than a person really needs.