Great Journey 🇸🇪 Day 527/2
If you don't plan, you experience the unplannable.
We sit in the museum restaurant - completely overloaded with knowledge and tired from the day. As we are going to spend the night right next door in the church car park, the end of the day is to take place here. Eat, brush our teeth, off to bed.
But it turns out differently: we meet two German travellers here with incredible Swedish experience. They even speak Swedish, it sounds simply beautiful!
We become enthusiastic about the region, rescue the current world politics from their dilemma and know: it fits. Instead of climbing into the nest, full and satisfied, we follow them to the youth hostel. There would be "something nice" there. We don't really know what, but we trust them. They drive ahead in their 4×4, we follow on foot. (But we can't figure out why we got to the youth hostel earlier than them).
Here, 2 ladies in traditional clothing await us at the campfire, with herbal tea and a smile that would melt even the coldest of hearts. Everything is still warm here, the almost -17 degrees are just bearable. Our hands clench into fists in our gloves and all our clothes in onion layers make us look like Michelin men, but they are warm!
Suddenly the ladies light hand torches, tune in briefly and start singing Sami songs in two voices. Goosebumps. And not because of the winter cold! They introduce themselves, talk about the region and the history of Jokkmokk. Singing and dancing. And let us dance along - after all, campfire songs in Lapland are often dance songs. Why? Obviously, so that the bodies keep moving and don't freeze to death.
So we dance by the fire to cosy music, trudging, twisting and shaking our legs and arms. After the third verse, the refrain is also catchy to us and we murmur along softly. The teapot makes the rounds once more and we don't even want the evening to end.
Thank you Annegret and Carsten for this wonderful evening!
