Sara Hammerzmith

And so it was time. Finally time to get back on the road again. It’s been just a bit under a year since the last Swedish tour of Sabaton, and for this run Hulkoff was coming along again. The first stop of the tour was in Övertorneå, pretty damn far up in the North.

So, travels started out pretty early in the morning – if I remember correctly I left my place around eight in the morning to head over to the airport. With being out of the touring habit for so long, I have lost track on how to do it and have not prepared ANTYHING in all honesty in order to make this tour go smoothly – like, sure I left well on time, but upon arriving at the airport I realized I hadn’t sorted any sort of preorder for the parkings, so I just went ahead and took the first best parking I found. Gladly enough, this is the parking I would usually have anyway so no issue really.

Off I went to meet up with my friend Isabelle whom I’d get to share this adventure with and we got on our plane, picked up the rental car she had arranged and started off the drive towards Övertorneå – which is located around two hours driving from Luleå. Oh yeah.. We had a bit of an incident on our way up. So, I get motion ill, or car sick if you like, very, very easily. And I forgot to take my pills, but I did not realize this until I started feeling a bit nauseous. I tried combatting it by stopping quickly on the road and driving with the window down – even taking a pill even though it technically was a bit too late….

And at one point I had to ask Isabelle to just pull over in the dead middle of a road and I went out… And it was a basic cascade. I haven’t done that in a long time, but I guess it was about time! Lesson learned. The worst part though? I didn’t get my very long hair out of the way, so I tried my best to clean it with snow.. I thought I was so fly until I borrowed Isabelles shower later only to realize I had just mushed it all in my hair and created a nice… cake… of that…

ANYWHO.

And let me tell you this – going up north – this much up north – it is like visiting a different country. It is legit the same country, but it is so incredibly different on the same time. The houses are quite more rustiqe than I’m used to home where I live, and most importantly – it is so incredibly silent. At least at the place where I lived – Willa Armas just outside of Övertorneå. Its a huge what seems to be family owned mansion of sorts with a huge kitchen and you stay in one of the bedrooms of the house. Baths are shared, and there is a sauna in the basement. The owners meet up with you and make sure you are most comfortable and help you out. They are extremely friendly – I can very warmly recommend this location for you. It is handy if you have a car already though, as it is outside the city.

Obviously, as we were arriving pretty late on the first night we went off to buy some dinner and have some before Isabelle brought me back to my hotel and the next day was about to commence. Got up WAY TOO LATE in what I would have liked myself, but obviously, if it is anything I learned about myself this past few months it is that I tend to always stay up way too late – I guess I can thank me discovering TikTok for that..

Anywho. Isabelle came to pick me up, bless her, and we headed off to the Arctic Circle – which was pretty damn interesting to see actually! A part of me is kind of all up in the air about it all – I have always wanted to travel up north but I never really had the chance properly til now – which means the world to me.

We headed back into the city to cook some more dinner before heading over to the show – but I’ll save that for another post!

// Sara

This entry was posted on January 31, 2023 at 9:34 pm and is filed under Travels, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.