Back to the Mines

After a short break during summer I'm back to my fornightly trips up to Kiruna.. I have missed them a bit. I haven't missed the project meetings so much as I'm not very big on the "no one dares to make a decision" time wasting approach pattern that these meetings have followed for nearly 3 years now. But I do enjoy the travel to and from Kiruna. It is one of the few times that I get entirely to myself. Early on I used to drive up to Kiruna. The back road is nice and the scenery is beautiful. Over the past year I've switched to travelling by train which, while taking a little longer than the car, gives me time to properly unwind and relax. Up here we have 2 competing train companies to choose from. One is national and the other is locally driven. The local provider has very nice and extremely comfortable carriages. They feel more like rooms than carriages. The downside with this train is that the engine is absolute bollocks and catches a cold at the drop of a hat. It is hard to accept that after at least 3 winters, they still haven't either fixed the problem or replaced the whole system. I have managed to figure out a workable compromise. For me, at least. I have to be in Kiruna at a specific time in order to attend my meeting. ecause of that, I can't afford to rely on the luxury train running that day. So I travel up on the national train which isn't quite as comfortable, but goes in all weathers and temperatures. last year they cancelled the train on me once, and that was when the temperature dropped below -35 deg C. The problem wasn't the train, the train could still go. What the company was concerned about was their ability to keep the carriages warm, should the train stop for any reason. That seemed a fair enough concern. I drove the car to Kiruna that day but I did wonder about exactly the same problem if I should encounter car troubles along the way. Touch wood that everything went ok. So anyway, I can get up to Kiruna when I need to. Coming back home again, I take the chance wth the luxury train as I don't have an arrival deadline to meet. The train goes reasonably early in the morning so f it gets cancelled I have time to rebook onto the national carrier again. So far it has been the perfect plan.

 

The big shock after having some time away from Kiruna was finding that they had moved the station about 2km from where it had been for the last millenium. No one told me about that. When we arrived into Kruna I had no idea where I was. I figured that I must be in Kiruna as that was the next station after Gällivare and I distinctly remembered passing Gällivare. So it had to be Kiruna. But where I was in Kiruna was a whole other matter. Fortunately it was still daylight and I could see, way off in the distance, the clock tower which I knew was in the middle of town. And that was kind of where my hotel was. Previously the hotel was less than 5 minutes from the station, you could see it from the station. So I spent the next half hour in exploration mode, trying to navigate my way through the suburbs to get into the centre of town. It didn't help that the first big snow had arrived the day before which made the road network even less clear. Eventually I made it to the hotel, albeit a bit more sweaty than I had anticipated.

 

The next morning I set off from my hotel for the early morning meeting start at LKAB offices. This is dead easy to get to. Straight down the road to where the train station USED to be, take the pedestrian tunnel under the railway line and then you are on the main road direct to the mine. So simple it is laughable. Shock number 2 for the visit. The entire main road road leading into the LKAB mine area, had been moved in my abscence. Thanks for telling me, guys. Well, that wasn't entirely true, the road was still there. It just didn't go anywhere now. Naturally it took me all the way to the end to discover that rather vital piece of information. When I got the the end of the road to nowhere I could see the new road and it wasn't terribly far from where I now was. Easy to get to. In the middle of summer. With half metre snow drifts, not quite as easy. I didn't have a lot of choices left at this stage as it was probably a 20 mintue walk back into town and then I still had to find the start of the brand new road. I figured that I could chance it with a quick cross country trek between the 2 roads. If worst came to worst I could tunnel out a snow cave using my clipboard and wait it out until summer. In the end it didn't come down to that and I managed to emerge onto the new road as the Abominable Snowman. While I was in full few of the office buildings by this stage I was hoping that no one had spotted me. I decided to keep my mouth shut and no one said anything either. I might have gotten away with the whole mess, but I haven't yet checked on You Tube.