When I tell people that I have traveled to Scandinavia and Russia they often ask, why? Here's my journey...
After doing a 2 week tour of Europe with Contiki I had picked my next trip - Eastern Road - Berlin, Prague, Budapest, Krakow, Vienna, Warsaw. It was a 2 week trip that I had heard good things about. The problem was that I "fell" into some extra time off of work and wanted to take advantage. I wanted to go away for 3 or 4 weeks and on a whim looked through the Contiki brochure. Did I want to do the Eastern Road tour and another tour, or just do some independent travel before and after? Then I noticed this 33 day tour of Scandinavia and Russia, it piqued my interest. I started looking up some info on Scandinavia and after seeing some pictures realized it was beautiful there, I mean really beautiful - beyond anything I could imagine. Russia was easy since I've always had an interest in WWII and the Cold War. My next issue was dealing with the fact that this would be a "budget" tour - we would be staying in cabins instead of hotels. I did some more research and found out that in Russia we would be staying in hotels and that the cabins were pretty decent. I bit the bullet and in January I booked my trip for May. A couple cabins are a small price to pay for seeing a fjord (whatever that was), a glacier and the midnight sun.
I loved Scandinavia, it was a beautiful place. I was actually sick my whole time there and ended up sleeping on the bus a fair amount. I would often wake up and look out the window and see a waterfall, or a lake or a beautiful mountain view. Almost all of our campsites were in great locations, often on a lake or nestled in the mountains. I'm not a terribly outdoorsy person, but being in a place like this made me one.
On our drive to Nordkapp from Hammerfest to see the midnight sun we kept seeing reindeer, I kept trying to take pictures. They wouldn't stop long enough for me to get a picture, but that was a gift. It was fun to watch them in their natural habitat (there isn't much of a population this far north). The little ones would follow their mother around and the medium sized ones seemed to be playing with each other. Who needs Animal Planet when you have this? Then there was the one at one of our breaks on the drive. It was a lone reigndeer, a young looking one. He was just standing there and I jumped off to get a picture of him. One of the guys from the tour walked up to him to feed him something and the reigndeer ate it and hung around. The story differs depending on who you ask at this point. My story: The reigndeer turned to me, flared his nostrels and charged me, I ran away barely surviving the incident. Apparently the video shows that the reigndeer started to walk towards me and I panicked and ran away. Hey, where I come from animals aren't friendly! Everyone then tried to feed or pet the reigndeer, it was funny to watch because I think he started getting freaked out by them. But the sweetest thing was that when the bus pulled away the reigndeer started to follow the bus and was at a full run.
I'll leave Russia and more tales from Scandinavia for another day.
