To Haparanda by Bus

Boden, Sweden – bright and sunny.

The next morning we walked through the quiet streets of Boden, dragging our bags to board our 11:51 train to Haparanda.

It was canceled.

But a bus would come at 12:22 and haul us to the same town, at least according to the little rambling message that crawled along the lighted sign above the door. It took some time to decipher the Swedish messaging, but eventually we were pretty sure we had it right. Bussima? Bus? Nei, no?

We waited and reviewed the denizens of the Boden train station. First there were the four young men lying on a wooden benches absolutely zonked. Their snoring gave no indication of their origins, but when they woke, I guessed Middle Eastern.

Then across from our bench, sat an elderly couple, clearly utterly in love. The little woman wearing her white tossel cap joked with her big husband, kissing and hugging him as often as she could. He caught my eye and smiled a little sheepishly between kisses.

When the sleeping men came out of there stupor, they were utterly lost. All four grabbed their gear, checked the train schedule multiple times on the wall and simply blinked.

I’m sure they had no idea what was going on. We were confused enough ourselves, and that was only because everything was written in Swedish. These poor guys likely spoke Arabic and Arabic uses an alphabet as different as Chinese or Cyrillic Russian. When Cyn and I were in Morocco and China signage of all kinds look like gibberish to us. So we understood their befuddlement. I wanted to help but wasn’t sure they were bound for the same train - I mean bus - and I didn’t speak Arabic (except to say hello and thank you), so I said nothing.

The four men now walked to the platform outside, then back inside the station entrance, and then outside again on the other side. At that point, I thought that all four had moved on, but then each of them returned again, still flummoxed.

By this time the bus had arrived, and we boarded. Just as it was about to leave before young men ran out of the station. One of them said something I couldn’t hear through the window to the bus driver.

“Haparanda, ya!“ Said the elderly driver of the bus. “Haparanda!” and he waved them in. The four men were, like us, headed to the Finnish border. Why I couldn’t fathom, but they probably couldn’t fathom why a couple of Americans like us we’re on the same bus either.

Meanwhile, another little mystery was unfolding. The cute, elderly couple, the one where the woman was hugging and kissing the gentleman in the train station so publicly, now got on the same bus that we did, except now she was alone. What was up? Cyn and I joked that they probably weren’t happily married for 55 years, with seven children somewhere throughout Europe, but had met on Facebook or Match.com or hooking up on fling.com and had just spent the weekend at one of the local hotels banging the headboards! She was smiling a lot.

Once she boarded, the randy fellow saw her off, and was gone faster than the Road Runner liked to leave Wiley Coyote behind. Probably late for his next tête-à-tête. What a stud!

We all rode the bus to Boden along a two-lane highway through some of the most beautiful and pristine winter landscape we had ever seen. On either side of us for an hour we passed through dense woods, deep, snow, and ice-encased trees stripped of their leaves.

Haparanda

Later 2:30 PM – Haparanda

The bus pulled up at the train station at 2:30 PM. Our affectionate woman who had enjoyed her weekend with her male friend (I have no idea if any of this was true) had arranged with the bus driver to be dropped somewhere in the heart of the city, and for all I know she had arranged for a date with him too!

At the town’s edge, everyone piled off at the train station — the Middle Eastern boys, the man who had found one of their lost phones and his companion, and us. But then I told the bus driver we needed to get from Hoparanda to Torino across the border.

“Stay,” he said, “we go to the Shell gas station.” The Middle Eastern boys, when they heard this, said they were also headed to Torino. The old bus driver waved everyone who had gotten off back on.

Five minutes down the road we were at the Shell station. We and the boys found a small mall near a giant IKEA store. It was bitter cold: 19°. We dropped our bags and checked our Apple Map wondering how to grab a cap of bus across the border and then found we were a mere 18 minute walk from where we stood.

“Want to walk across the Finnish border?“ I ask.

“We walked into Mexico,“ said Cyn. “I guess we can walk into Finland.“ (You gotta love her her!)

Onto Tornio

We followed the path over the hard crunching snow. It took us through a tunnel under a road and there was the border. Cyn stood with her bags, and several hundred yards away sat a cluster of buildings that we hoped included our hotel. Beyond we could make out the northernmost edge of the huge Bothnia Sea that separates Norway and Sweden from the rest of Northern Europe.

Fifteen minutes more hauling our rollers through the snow, fingers growing numb, we made it to the Olof Hôtel, where, we were very happy to see that they had gingerbread biscuits and hot free tea.