Luleå, Norbotten, Sverige

We are again in our beloved beautiful END OF THE WORLD ( end of Baltic Sea)!
After a 24 hour travel odysey ( 3 changes of trains and 3 of buses- substitution busses for the railway works) a sunny Thursday evening , 9 pm, welcomed us to Luleå. To our surprise, the perfect coordination between the trains and buses we had to take, was only altered by the last train, from Umeå till Luleå, which arrived with 1 hour delay. Fortunately, Fernando, our host, lives very near the station and he was duly informed about this exceptional situation.
Only puchero chileno had to wait to be eaten!
Our tiredness did not surpass the feeling of joy of being back to Norrland!
Fernando and Pia live just by the Baltic seashore and they prepared a separate apartment for us, with a spacious sitting room and a sauna! This night Fernando made a welcome dinner ( puchero de ave) in Chilenean style accompanied by Chilenean wine. Spanish, English and Swedish were spoken during the dinner prolonging till midnight ( the sun was still on, so we were even more confused about the time!) as we were getting more insights about the Northern Swedish reality.


Next day started very early... a bit too early for our taste. 10 am we had an appoitment with a TV crew to interview and film our tango. What pictures do not show, is a royal dance hall with columns and mirror, which was chosen as a setting for the programme.
Then, dressed up as we were ( I only took off my tango shoes), Fernando took us for a little tour of the town and surroundings. First- a viewpoint- Ormberget, meaning Mountain of the Serpent ,which is one of the few hills around overlooking the Baltic Bay and the estuary of the River Lulea. Then- a Svartöstaden, an artist district by the sea,where the famous writers like Mattias Alkberg, Liza Marklund and Mikael Niemi live or lived ( I was moved to hear that Mikael Niemi, a writer of a book ' Vittula', I have seen in BsAs made a film, is a personal friend of our host Fernando) then - Kulturen Hus and a city center.
As all the Northern Swedish ( AND NOT ONLY) inhabitants- celebrate a sunny spring day by going out and eating ice-creams on the streets or market squares . We remember this ceremony from Nybro, were spring came with us, some 10 days ago, and Lorena with Sami invited us for an ice-cream walk in the centre.
Storgatan. Each street in Sweden has its ' Gran Via' . So does Lulea. A sunny day like today is an excellent opportunity to be outdoors, to undress ( a little bit too much for the weather and our tastes- sleevless shirts, short skirt and sandals on naked feet are only the sign of anxiety for the warmth to come) or to play chess. We took a walk on Storgatan to look at girls exposed bodies, actually.
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Tonight our first worskhops began. As we have already discovered- the northern Swedish have much more fire inside and they respond to tango inmediately. Sensus, our organizer, told us about the incredible interest in this event- the students arrived not only from Lulea, but from the surrounding towns within 300km distance and even from Stockhom! MY LATIN NORRLAND! We met many tango friends and familiar faces; it feels like coming back home to meet family!

Our first entire day in Lulea finished with a LATINO-SWEDISH-FINISH reunion at Pia& Fernando's place. We had representatives from Chile, Argentina, Finland and Sweden. Chilean wine and great chats were had untill 1 am- and it was still bright outside....
Midnightsun is our faithful companion, thus it is hard to go to bed!On Monday afternoon we were ' kidnapped ' to Pitea; our faithfull students from there did not have enough of us and of ' tango torture' and arranged for the privated classes. Obviously with coffe and fika before and supper after... This sunny afternoon-evening and night ( I will never believe about the darkness aand bad weather in the north again!) was our good bye for this year. The skies turned all the colours as Stefen was driving us back to Lulea at 11 pm! The famous norrlands guld is not only a publicity for the bear, but it is a TRUE AND GENUINE REALITY!