@colorado hirailer posted:Well, l certainly envy many of the posters on here, who have managed to "get out of the county". I have ridden behind steam from Skagway, Alaska into B.C. Canada, the Glacier Express around Switzerland, out of London to access Stonehenge (missed the return bus back to the station for London, and had a walk through the English countryside, which my girlfriend of the time did not enjoy, but we caught a bus back to the sation at a crossroads in the boonies (try that in this country), the tube around London, and a train up through Edinburgh to Inverness to rent a car and drive around Loch Ness. I have ridden the rack rail up from the floor of the fjord to catch the train from Bergen, Norway through Oslo and down through Denmark to Frankfurt. And have ridden the train up the canyon to access Machu Picchu in Peru. Also have ridden behind steam on the Welsh narrow gauge.
My train riding in Norway was all north opf the Arctic circle.
On a business trip beginning with a Monday morning meeting near Stockholm, I thought it a good weekend for some sightseeing. Having known for a long time about the scenic iron ore line from the Swedish mines near Kiruna to the Norwegian port of Narvik, I flew to Kiruna and took the train to Narvik. Overnight in Narvik with a hard time getting to sleep as it never gets close to dark at night in July.
Sunday am took the train back to Boden in Sweden and got on the sleeper to Stockholm for the most frightening sleeping car ride of my life. I had to get off early in the morning at Uppsala, about 45 minutes before Stockholm. I woke up in the middle of the night and it was daylight outside. My watch said 3:00 and I was sure it had stopped and I might miss my station. So I stayed awake until we came to the next station, where I could check the station clock and verify that it really was only 3:00 am and y watch was right on time. - That was only about 400 miles south of the Arctic circle.
Had the opposite experience in Helsinki on a consulting assignment the first week of January. Siting in a conference room at 9:30, we could look out the window at the sunrise.
