Guess Who Am I

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.

Or in the air … or if we are completely correct then at the airport while writing this.

I am currently in the cloudy Frankfurt having a long layover. But I spent the time very well, I got registered to the pilot project of Automated Border Control. The registration process was easy and fast, you will register your passport and then your iris will be scanned without eyeglasses. After that you should be even able to use eyeglasses in the future scans and it did work for me. This pilot is currently available in Frankfurt airport for EU citizens and I already skipped the traditional passport control queue by using the automated process. This will again make traveling a little bit easier and faster if you travel through the Frankfurt airport and are having international flight.

Otherwise the traveling is going well so far. I wasn’t exactly jumping from the joy when I had to wake up too early (02:30) and then drive to Helsinki to catch my early flight to Frankfurt but I have time to sleep again onboard the airplane. And traffic isn’t actually any kind of problem in Finnish highways during those hours and it is already so bright outside that you don’t feel tired like if you would be doing the same during the winter time.

We decided to enjoy Afternoon tea, Häagen-Dazs style. Here is the Häagen-Dazs Ice Cream Royal High Tea in Beijing.

Once again there was a flight interruption in place. Already during the check-in in Guangzhou there was something going on but in Beijing it was already a fact that my flight to Stockholm with Air China would be delayed at least five hours. After a brief discussion with Air China, we agreed that re-routing would be the best option in this situation. As I was already in the international area and had gone through immigration I was officially already departed from China, so the first step was to get the depart stamp cancelled and an access to check-in area granted. Air China friendly assigned me a personal helper who took me through the immigration (cancellation requires manager approval and cannot be done in ordinary desk) and then guided me to the Air China check-in duty managers who started the process to get me into some other flight.

As Air China flights to Europe were already been closed then my option was Scandinavian Airlines to Copenhagen and soon I had new tickets and routing to there and then to Tampere. Quite smooth operation even including that I needed to re-check my luggage again with SAS.