It’s almost time for Christmas, and I’m so excited! My last class was on the 14th of December, so I have a long time off! We start again on the 15th of January, but we do have a home exam on the 12th of January, so I do have some work to do :). Besides the home exam, I also need to finish two projects for my current course so I actually have quite a lot to do! But let’s not stress about this until after Christmas haha.

A friend of me from the Netherlands came to visit me in Linköping, and we decided to rent a car and go to a place a bit more (7 hours, which is not that far in Sweden) up north, it’s called Idre. You can super easily rent a car here in Linköping, and it’s actually not that expensive so that’s really nice. With the car you get to more remote places and nature reserves than with the train, so that would be a big pro of renting a car. The first plan was to go camping and stay in shelters, to keep it on a student friendly budget. However, temperatures varied between -20 and -30, so we decided to rent an Airbnb kind of last minute. Luckily we founded a super cute cottage in Idre which was not too expensive, and it’s really nice to be able to cook your own food since eating at a restaurant can become expensive in Sweden.

Idre is a small town a bit more up north in Sweden, and it’s really close to Idre Fjäll which is a ski resort. Me and my parents went to these places a few years ago in summer, and I remember that I really loved it there – there’s a lot of nature and it feels like you’re in the middle of nowhere in the nature reserves there. In the winter it looks completely different, everything is white and it’s kind of hard to hike because it’s slippery and really hard to walk in the snow – it feels like running up a hill without getting forward ;).

Don’t expect too much fancy restaurants or any cheap ones for that matter, it’s very basic there and you either go there for nature or for skiing/snowboarding. There’s everything you need there tho, there are two quite big supermarkets and a lot of outdoor stores to get some appropriate warm clothing for the cold. We went to the highest waterfall in Sweden called “Njupeskär”, which was of course frozen and part of the hiking trail was closed, but it was still really pretty! Other nature reserves that are worth a visit are “Städjan-Nipfjället” and “Grövelsjön”. I took my camera with me and made some nice pictures of winter wonderland.

Me and my friend never learnt how to ski, so we wanted to try it out on this little trip. However, we didn’t really read into it and the personnel in Idre Fjäll told us the ski season only opens in week 51 – and then we would be gone already so that was sad.

Luckily we found something else! In Lofsdalen, a little town approximately an hour away from Idre Fjäll, you could rent cross country skies and they had some trails open so we decided to do that and it was really fun! I did cross country skiing a few times when I lived in Norway, but it’s pretty hard and you will get sweaty going up all those hills, so it’s definitely a good workout ;).

We stayed for four days, and Sunday we drove back to Linköping. Monday we took the flight from Linköping Airport to Amsterdam, and I’m currently writing this blog from home-home! It’s been really rainy here and I miss the nice snowy landscapes in Sweden, but it’s really nice to be able to spend Christmas with my family and friends.

Have an amazing Christmas and a good new year!! God jul!

I’ll be back in 2023, hopefully till then 🙂 // Milou

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