Monday 17 February: on our way back home

Kemi (Finland) - Strömbäck (Sweden) 432 km

Today not everybody came out of their beds easily, soit wad a bit later than usual before the cars were packt. But then the time did arrive to start our trip back home via Sweden. After a last joint breakfast we said goodbye to the raid teams and got in our cars.

It was not long before we drove into Sweden, the last Scandinavian country we will visit this time. 

The gearbox of our car started to make noise again so we decided to change the oil one more time this trip, hopefully that will bring us home safe.  

In Scandinavia most petrol stations have an indoor working place which you can rent per minute. So we found one to do the job.

It did not take long so we were back on the road quickly. On the way we found out that Swedisch truck drivers are really horrible on the road. They only think of themselves bringing other cars on the road in serious danger. One of them almost pushed us into the guardrail because he wanted to overtake us with his truck with lorry on a place were to lanes bacame one again. There wasn’t enough space for him but he went anyway pushing us and the car in front of us of the road! Luckily there was a side road witch we both  could turn in, otherwise I don’t know what had happened. 

We stopped at a burger restaurant to get our nerves back before going back on the road again.

Some time later we had the second incident with a truck and lorry, this time the driver crossed the road without looking, we had to hit the break quite hard to stop in time, and we were on a road with a speed limit of 110, so it wasn’t like he crossed a little side road or something. Luckily also this time it went well, but there were more small incidents also with car drivers. We came to the conclusion that Swedisch drivers, truck and car, are all real idiots. Driving here is more dangerous than in Russia. And than the bad weather didn’t help either, nor did the lack of good signs on the road.  

But we reached our place for tonight safely. Finding our rooms looked like an escape room game including an envelope with clues 😂.

Escape hotel

We arrived at the main building but it was closed. In the mailbox was an envelope with my name on it. In it were four keycards, a map and a list of instructions. First we had to activate the cards outside the main building, it took some minutes before we figured out how we could activate them, but we did. Than we followed the map to another building to find out we got four separate bedrooms. So now I am lying alone in my room and Tanguy is in a separate room also by himself, feels strange  🥺.

There is also nothing to do so we all were in our rooms at seven or so. I think the others are allready asleep, but it’s to early for me. But it gave me time to catch up with my stories, so that is fine.  

Now I will try to get some sleep as well because it seems we need to get on the road early.