Traipsing across Scandinavia for the sake of decent snow

At home we have a metal painted sign depicting a person riding a bicycle that says in Bangla: "bones heal, bikes don't." During a ski trip to Sweden, Margo confirmed this declaration but with a ski pole, skiing so hard, it broke. And, on the last day of our trip, while skiing the back bowls she fell and broke her wrist. I point out the location because she had to take two T-bar lifts, a regular lift, and ski 45 minutes back to the front with a broken wrist and she did it like a badass.  

We took her to an urgent care for a 2-minute, $550 visit to confirm what we already knew. Assuring us that it was not bad parenting nor bad medicine, we could save ourselves the extra $1,000 x-ray and casting by getting them done back home in Tashkent. So we got her some Tylenol and flew home with a souvenir wrist brace. 

That was the end of our trip and the beginning was just as eventful when a winter storm hit Oslo so bad, they closed the airport forcing all planes to divert to either Copenhagen or Stockholm. Denmark drew the short straw, receiving plane full of people and no plan with what to do with us. The crew turned off the on-board entertainment and air conditioning, and took away water service. Still on the tarmac three hours later and fully marinated in displeasure, they gave us two choices: fly five hours back to Istanbul for rebooking, or deplane and Turkish Airlines would forfeit any assistance or reimbursement. Flying can be so lame sometimes.

Thank goodness for Google Fi, because by the time we emerged from the hot pot of body odor and angry customers, we had booked a hotel room and new flights. All we needed to do now was to walk through an abandoned terminal not unlike "Nightmare on Elm Street", fake smile at the grumpy, confused customs officials, and wait a couple more hours for airport employees to sort the bags that would need to stay on the plane versus not, and recieve them somewhere at baggage claim without notification of where that would be. 

Determined to make the most of visiting a new country, we did what what Schlinks do: death march walking. We toured Nyhavn, a 17th century waterfront that is as cute as it seems in photos. In the meatpacking district, we sampled beers and ate the best bbq outside of Kansas City, covering about 16km on the day before catching a flight to Trondheim, Norway. Landed, we then rented a car to get us to Are, Sweden, arriving just before midnight. Arrived, we would finally enjoy a few days of skiing with reindeer sightings, cozying up on reindeer fur covered chairs, and eating reindeer pizza.

Copenhagen

Merman espresso

AEDs everywhere.

Windblown warming hut.

Back bowls of Are.

View from our ski-in, ski-out airbnb. 10/10 recommend.

Inside view of our airbnb. 
Saving this photo for my future dream
mud room - complete w/boot warmers
and ALL THE HOOKS.

Are Summit.