Guess Who Am I

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.

It is funny how you experience Hong Kong. While the British have given the area to China you will experience the British culture here very strongly. This isn’t the China you experience in the mainland, some things are missing and some are replaced with Western style. Taxi drivers want to speak English with you for example.
All the time I am feeling that I am in London instead, just that there more Chinese restaurants than in London. So, Hong Kong isn’t China just like that, Hong Kong is Hong Kong and nothing else. It is a unique place.

Christmas is still here, at least in Hong Kong and Ocean Park. They run this light and music show lighting up the Christmas tree twice while we were queuing for the ice sculpture show.
http://www.guesswhoami.com/videos/MOV01580_480x360.flv

Harbour view from the hotel room.

Fog is quite beautiful when you can observe it over the field in the early morning in the countryside. It makes everything so peaceful. And it also makes airports peaceful as you might have noticed from the news recently.

As usual, I joined many others and found out that my flight from Helsinki to London has been cancelled. I was supposed to fly this evening to London, stay overnight and continue tomorrow to Hong Kong. Now the new plan is to directly fly from Helsinki to Bangkok and then continue from there to Hong Kong. It was just that originally I chose the routing because I wanted to fly with Cathay Pacific and now I will be spending the first long flight with Finnair.

Most important thing is of course that I will be flying to Hong Kong anyway and I will get there so the holiday plans don’t change completely, just some extra steps to be taken compared to original plan.

New city for me! This time just for business travel so the days are full of work and there isn’t much sightseeing happening for me this time. Business trips are always like this, you just see airport, hotel and couple of the offices. Then if you are lucky, you will see some local restaurants and if you are not that lucky you will get used to the hotel restaurant in the evening.

Compared to my previous one week in China, this is much different. No nice hotels, no stress-free days and no relaxation. Weather in Moscow is very cold at the moment and you really can feel the cold wind blowing through the city - Siberian wind maybe?

Oh well, you cannot always be in China, can’t you?

Time flies and so do I. Or at least try to fly. After successful domestic flights in China, which are supposed to be always delayed and problematic I checked-in for my Finnair flight to Helsinki and that was delayed already 1.5 hours and the plane hasn’t even arrived to Beijing so I would guess more delay is expected. There must be always at least one flight delayed when I am traveling and this time it was three out of the 4 Finnair flights, well, the fourth I will be missing because of my delayed flight back to Finland.