Lapkook

Day 8 

Swedish massage is like Mysore Masala Dosa! Anyone who has gone to a dosa wala in Mumbai, he would get a concoction called Mysore Masala Dosa, which is not a bad thing to eat, but there is one problem with it. It's origins are not from Mysore. Imagine my surprise when I didn't find any Swedish Massage parlors in a place that it was supposed to have originated from! I would have thought there would be one on every street corner (ala Thai Massage in Thailand). Obviously I was wrong!!! 

First things first, we had to finish packing as the train to Narvik was later today. After cramming all the photography equipment we had carried between the 2 bags, we headed down for the same crappy free breakfast the hotel had to offer. We took the time to wash a few of the essentials in the common use Washer and Dryer the hotel had in the basement. And then it was time for the massage...which was ok ok at best. Nothing like the Swedish Massage I was expecting when I landed in Sweden.

Post checkout we headed to Centraalen where we realized that there was a storage locker crisis...we couldn't get a single decent free one. So while Praveen went to get our seats confirmed, I waited like a stalker to see if a locker opens up...which it did after about 30 minutes. We piled our stuff into that lone locker and then headed for some inner glove shopping at new intersport store. There was some sort of promotion happening in the store next to it, so there was a long queue that had formed with people just waiting to get in, despite the face that it was it's snowing outside, but that's normal for them I guess.

Around the back of the Pizza hut (where veggie lunch was possible for my partner in crime) we went, searching for Naturkompaniet which makes awesome cold weather gear, but the wind trousers were way too expensive, so I decided to ignore buying them and take my chances. Pizza take away was the only option for food in the train journey as we had to get going, but we were distracted by the Candy store bang opposite the Pizza Hut. So tons of candy shopping was done for the kids. Now the only thing left to buy was a few bottles of beer, so we would have to head to System Bolagade, knowing that we had to rush back to empty our locker locker. We realized that apparently u can buy booze & carry it on the train, but u can't drink it on the train...very different from our experience between Amsterdam & Copenhagen. Decide to ignore.

It was time to call my little princess to tell her that it's snowing & that I'm leaving for Narvik. After a lot of running around trying to get in time for the train, we reached Platform 4, bogey 14, seats 83 & 84. This time we didn't have the entire bogey to ourselves. We were seated with a gentleman from Kiruna, this huge guy who was a management executive, but who in his past life used to have snow mobile tours. It was an interesting series of conversations with him which ranged from his visits around the country, his hilarity at me being cold even in the train and finally his description of Raindeer blood soup (lapkook). That somehow didn't kill my appetite and I decided to dig into the take away pizza around 9ish

The next day, we would be at out destination. Spirits were high and it took me a while to drop off. But eventually, it was time to say good night!