Odo: 285193 Location: Oulu, Finland
The last big city before the wilderness. The capital of the north they call themselves. I decided to stay a couple of days and use the powers of the mighty interwebs to spent some time in good company before going north. Just after arriving I met up with some couchsurfing folks. One told me that there’s a chance to see northern lights (aurora borealis) in the night so we went off to a nearby lake which also doubled up as a decent spot to spend the night for me.
Aurora Borealis. Thats how they look like. Thx to robin for the picture.
Sitting on the beach and sipping beer we waited and talked with some late night swimmers and came up with some fun facts about our home countries: Finland has approx 5 million inhabitants and an area of 338000 square kilometers. Germany has 80 million and approx 380000 square kilometers. So roughly 1/16th of population density. People are always amazed when I tell them that the west part of the Harz Mountains has 100 lakes. Finland has 188000 lakes. Not too bad at all. But the western Harz has the higher lake density with only 800 square kilometers.. Finland feels a little bit like the northern version of Australia.
After mocking us for trying to watch northern lights that early in the year the locals took off and some hours later we actually saw aurora borealis! This actually is quite uncommon but for some weird sun cycle reasons and solar witchcraft I arrived just at the right time of the 11 year sun cycle to watch fancy lights…
Pics or it didn’t happen? Alright, here you go… Thx to robin for this pic as well…
Before the trip I thought I won’t see any because I’m up here in the summer. Well, summer is actually at it’s end (it’s shorter in the north) and I’ll probably see plenty of northern lights. And have an indian summer like experience. And less mosquios. Not what I expected but appreciated non the less. Got to do some shopping for warmer clothing though.