Northern Europe: Sweden - An overnight stay in Kiruna

By Cubie - September 14, 2023


By the time we arrived in Kiruna, it was evening time. Our plan was to get to Abisko so we didn't plan to do much in Kiruna. During planning, we found that there are 2 trains and 2 buses a day from Kiruna to Abisko, once in the morning and the other before 3pm. So we have some time to walkabout if take the later train. 

That - was the plan. What happened was we decided to just go to Abisko in the morning, got a cab to bring us to the train station. We arrived to an empty station. There is no ticket sales at Kiruna station. We sat down inside the station, downloaded the SJ train app and tried to buy train tickets before the train arrived... and there were no tickets available for the day. I managed to call the customer service and went as far as asking if we can buy tickets if we are willing to stand all the way to Abisko. I think I gave the poor staff a shock because there was a long pause till I asked, "not possible?". 


Next plan was to get take a bus to Abisko. We found out after our failed train plan was - there is no bus service in winter. No train, no bus and our last hope was to contact our accommodation in Abisko for a shuttle. After a few tries, leaving messages on the booking app and phone messages, we managed to get through to the guesthouse and got ourselves a seat on the shuttle later in the day. 

Since we have checked out, we thought will run another errand, to check on the mobile service we got. We got a Telenor sim card when we were in Stockholm, despite being told that free EU roaming is included, we found out that there is no service when we were in Finland so was worried that it only worked in Sweden. We randomly got on a bus and asked to get off when we saw a shopping centre thinking that there would be a mobile shop that we can ask for help but none found. 

From outside of our hostel

We ended up spending most of our time in the tourist information center in Kiruna as the shuttle will pick us up from there. Though we did see the Kiruna Church on our bus ride. The other place we went was a burger joint near the tourist info center. All we have seen in Kiruna was the hostel we stayed in, the train station, a random shopping centre, tourist information centre, bus stops, bus rides and a burger joint - a very unlike travel itinerary. 

Empes special - Hamburger with cheese, bacon, cucumber mayonnaise, onion and mash, SEK 80

This was around noon, outside of Empes burger


Side note: I haven't had a burger for awhile...

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