12th of September - A weekend in Sápmi II

Porjus

Back to Jokkmokk:

And back to our room...

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11th of September - A weekend in Sápmi I

This week-end we decided to make our way up North, and cross the Arctic Circle.

Our destination: Jokkmokk, second largest in size of all Swedish municipalities and is, with an area of 19,477 km² (approximately 7,520 square miles) slightly smaller than Slovenia or New Jersey.

"Sápmi is the name of the cultural region traditionally inhabited by the Sami people. Non-Sami and many regional maps have often called this same region Lapland as there is considerable regional overlap between the two terms. However Lapland can be either misleading, offensive, or both, depending on the context and where this word is used to the Sami. Among the Sami people however, Sápmi is strictly used and acceptable."

The Sámi flag (the red part of the circle represents the Sun, the blue one the Moon)

Preparing for departure... a C3 Picasso filled with maps, warm clothes and cookies naturelly.

On the way...

Shopping in Jokkmokk - culture choc:

One of the three churches in Jokkmokk:

The youth hostel:

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22nd of August - Evening walk down town

Once we had settled in our respective cells, Mum & I went out for a walk down in Umeå.

Umeå has quite a large center, close to the Ume river which makes it particularly nice. People mostly use their bike to move about, and the bus service seems to have be comfortably frequent too. Car drivers systematically stop at pedestrian crossings, which means I will probably forget good habits such as checking both directions before crossing the road! A lot of shops, especially clothes (including H&M of course) as well as interior design and decoration stores.

Funnily, when were making our way home, there was an outside stage from which I recognised an Iron Maiden tune being performed. When we found the stage, there was Alexander's look-alike definitely rocking it with a good old Gibson guitar! Alex, you should have told us you were touring all around Europe!

So, are all Swedes blue-eyed blonds (to answer one of my preliminary questions)....?
A few clues:
http://www.fika.de/typical-swede.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_people

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