A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again by David Foster Wallace. From the title and cover illustration I thought this might be some autobiographical account of college life, I was quite mistaken and pleasantly so. I really like this guy's style, and his observations are quite astute, shame he isn't an anthropologist. Given the depth with which he analyzes things I feel almost obligated to watch David Lynch's movies just so Wallace didn't write about him in vain. Maybe the title essay about Wallace's ocean cruise actually was the best or maybe I identified with it since I've been on a cruise myself. Also props to him for describing a person's voice as post-coital, an adjective I've never heard anyone else use and have been too afraid of misinterpretation to use it myself. I'd say that is the best part about Wallace, he describes things in a way you wouldn't have thought of, and in doing so describes them perfectly. You don't even have to have any experience with what he's talking about to get exactly the right feeling from his writing, but a common point of reference improves the reading experience infinitely.

The day before I went to Kiruna I went to Stockholm with Feifei to see a Rembrandt exhibition at the museum. Pretty cool stuff, it was interesting picking out the different translations to certain paintings or slogans. i.e. Memento mori was translated in Swedish as "Remember that you are mortal" the English translation was "Don't forget you must die."
We also went to the American Food Store to get some root beer, but all they had was diet root beer. It was vastly inadequate and a poor introduction for someone who's never tasted it before. Afterwards we had homemade Chinese dumplings with garlic sauce. Apparently they cut down on the garlic for me since Swedes cannot stand garlic at all. I impressed them by eating garlic at their level and they were in actual disbelief that I could handle it. I would likely not do that again however as it took a full 24 hours to get rid of my garlic breath (morning breath+garlic breath=ew²) I also impressed them with the correct use of chopsticks, yet another remarkable trait that I owe to my family. Excellent.

Kiruna was pretty cool, though not as frigidly cold as I had been warned. It was above freezing most of the time and I actually regarded it as pleasantly brisk. I went on a Northern Lights tour out to the forest many kilometers outside of Kiruna. We went by dog sled, which was pretty interesting, though the guy in charge of getting us to the campsite was not exactly the cheerful type and often got upset at us for not doing what he didn't tell us to do. The guy who was in charge of the campsite was friendly as can be, though. He prepared some tasty dishes of reindeer meat seasoned with none other than garlic,apparently the Norrlanders can handle the stuff a lot more than the rest of the Swedes. We went into the sauna a few hours later, the old-fashioned wood fire kind with no safety limit on the temperature. That was intense. I also tried the common Swedish practice of running out of the sauna and into the snow. I thought the severe temperature difference would be quite painful, similar to running out of a spa and jumping into a swimming pool, but it was quite pleasant. I was so hot I was literally steaming, (picture the Terminator when he first arrives).
After few more hours the once cloudy sky became completely clear and far from city lights the sky was full of stars. Around midnight the Northern Light appeared, and I have to say that it is one of the most underwhelming things I've ever seen. I'll post pics of it on Flickr. I checked the "fore"casts for the Northern Light and they said it was a pretty quiet time with little solar activity. Of course, by the laws of the Universe now that I'm gone there will be a magnificent Northern Lights display the likes of which will be talked about for years. I guess it's not fair to judge the Northern Lights on the crappy specimens I saw, just like it would be wrong to judge root beer by only tasting the diet version.
The trip back to Kiruna was interesting, sledding in the dark as part of a convoy of inexperienced sledders is quite a feat. And it was there I learned the difference between feeling numb and feeling like an amputee.

I was unable to go to the other two cities I wanted to visit due to a couple of factors: one, I couldn't visit two cities in opposite directions from Kiruna in the time allotted and two, the Norwegian transportation system sucks. I had always thought that Zeno's Paradox was something cooked up by an idiot trying to sound profound and had no practical application, but as it turns out this is the principle behind Norwegian buses. In order to get to Hammerfest, Norway from Kiruna I need to take the train to Narvik. Fair enough. To get from Narvik to Hammerfest I need to take a bus which can only take me halfway, to Tromsø. From there I must take another bus which can only take me to Alta, halfway in between. Unfortunately, I cannot take that bus, I must take the bus to Storslett, which is (surprise!) halfway in between. Each one of these towns will take a day, since starting traveling before 4PM is just plain silly, so I realized I couldn't possibly make it to Hammerfest in time, stayed in Tromsø awhile then began my trip home. Shame too, I was really looking forward to getting a Hammerfest T shirt.

My last day in Kiruna I visited the Icehotel, which was pretty impressive, despite my very incorrect mental image of it being a multi-story glimmering spire adorned with icicles. The inside is reminiscent of the Fortress of Solitude, or if real life had the obligatory ice level in video games. The chairs were pretty comfortable, amazingly enough.

Some other observations I made: -as pretty as Sweden is, geographically Norway kicks the crap out of Sweden. One word: fjords.
-Either red hair dye is really popular up north or there are a hell of a lot of redheads living there, like maybe every 9th person.
-I'm either going to continuously be bugged by people's views on the US or will have to learn to accept incredibly backhanded compliments. I'm still trying to define the look that people give me when they find out I'm American; perhaps one of surprise that I'm not Yosemite Sam, perhaps one of dismay as if I told them I was an assassin, perhaps one of disgust since they're assholes. I dunno, maybe all of the above.

Words of the Day: sylph-A slim, graceful woman or girl.
sunroll-(word invented by me) the phenomenon observable above the Arctic Circle during winter where the sun does not rise in the sky as it does elsewhere in the world but rolls across the horizon for a few hours producing what appears to be an incredibly long lasting sunset.

**And a small addendum that I promised myself I would mention: in Kiruna I stayed in the most awesomely named hostel ever: the STF Youth Hostel.