Guess Who Am I

The previous post was about the fog in Paris. What exactly happened? I didn’t yet have time to describe it earlier but here it comes. Well, the whole airplane indeed spend some extra time in the Helsinki-Vantaa airport to wait the permission to fly to Paris. Paris was heavily affected by the fog, which was still visible in there when we finally got there after being 1.5 hours late. Without saying, it was obvious that the next flight left at the same time we landed. Air France tried to offer us a flight next day, which would have meant that there is no way to get into the important meeting in time. A little bit more investigation and pressure for them (Air France booked tickets actually helped quite a much, story would have been different with Finnair booked tickets) and they found something, which they told us in very careful matter - let’s say, almost scared. Something they called crazy plan but for their complete surprise we accepted it. Get transited to London and then to New York and then to Bogotá, we would arrive to the final destination at 5:30 in the morning. Nice!

So, you get to your final destination after traveling 32 hours. I must say that it was my shortest visit to USA ever, and yes, we had to go through immigration and customs. I have a new stamp from USA now in my passport while I didn’t get off the airport at all. And after spending 12 hours in the Bogotá, it was time to travel back to Europe and back to Finland. The return flight actually went smoothly and after 3 days without a proper sleep it was quite nice feeling to find a bed again at home.

Flying can be really fun sometimes.

Funny and surprising things happen when I travel. Yesterday was extremely busy day and then I rushed to Helsinki to spend one night in the airport hotel do I could catch my early flight to Paris. And now I am sitting in the airplane waiting for the flight - already half an hour waiting because there is some heavy fog in Paris and everything is delayed in there. So, now we just wait for our slot, which might come some time in the future, let’s see.

I am pretty sure that I will miss the next flight to Bogotá and get re-routed or spend a night in Paris. Sometimes things just get wrong but for some reason it feels like all my travel is always like this. I wonder why? Just my luck?

Tip of the day: don’t travel in the same flight with me if you don’t like to be re-routed/delayed/end up to different place you were supposed to/or something else.

Once again traveling to Russia, this time to the Southern part of the Russia and also going to experience the Tupolev aircraft for the first time.

For some time during my travel there hasn’t been any major problems. But of course now when we were returning to Finland, we encountered a minor delay, which can happen any day but turned to change everything. It started in the first airport in Qingdao with minor 2.5 hour delay. That isn’t that huge delay, you can easily spend that time in the lounge and enjoying some refreshments. But when we arrived to Beijing then all the plans just changed, we missed our connection to Stockholm and we faced a situation where we needed to redesign the whole trip.

And it didn’t actually go so easily, for many reasons (and most of those still unknown to me) there were huge problems to book new flights with Star Alliance (mainly SAS) and especially the connections to Finland. Tampere has never been an easy destination for people outside of Finland but these problems were much more than just recognizing the airport code. In the end I just suggested re-routing us through Hong Kong and London. In the end, the long-haul flight from Hong Kong to London was surprisingly with Cathay Pacific, which was a nice surprise that they approved that. It brought at least some certainty to the long-haul and also certain level of service guaranteed.

After all, we arrived to Finland, just after traveling about 39.5 hours totally including all the time spent in the different airports. Traveling can be such a fun thing.

Here I am in Beijing. Guess what kind of surprise waited for me when I arrived to the luggage claim area? The carts were nicely positioned in a perfect row waiting for the passengers. Very nice service.

The next aircraft is already at the gate waiting for us. I am currently in Frankfurt after two flights and next airport will be Beijing.

I am traveling to China again after staying in Finland already for two months. This time it will be a special trip because we are celebrating our wedding there.

So, everything starts with small steps, this trip with small Cimber airplane. Other updates from Tampere-Pirkkala airport are that the roadwork is still going on in nearby highway making sure you need to be extra careful reading those signs, I almost missed an exit while driving here. And security check was extra difficult today.

After the thunderstorm we got hailstorm. After that there was some snow left on the ground.

Approaching Stockholm … I am in the middle of interesting movie. Can we take a scenery route through Europe so I can finish the movie? I want to know how this ends! Fog in Stockholm preventing the landing? Heavy rain? Anything?

But we landed on time … and now I don’t know how Anna & Anna ended. I need to get that movie. Don’t you just hate airlines when they are on time?