Land of the lakes, a lot of trees, … and of the bad weather. Many of you kept asking me, why I decided to spend my winter this year in finland. Temperatures down to -30°? And all this voluntarely? No thanks, many of you would say. But I always wanted to come here some day. Also, because I met so many nice fins in the last few years during the past IGSMs. And when the opportunity showed up, I just had to take this chance. First few days of my stay are over – time to make a short review.
Arrival
Equiped with 19.5 kg luggage, laptop case and ski bag (!) I started my journey on a sunday morning. Not knowing what will expect me before my departure. First right off to check-in… But, only self checkin desks were available. This should be no problem for me, I thought. But I got stuck already in one of the first questions: How many items of luggage do you have? Do they mean just check-in luggage? Or maybe also the sports bag, which I had to announce the airline two days before departure? Or maybe even the hand luggage is counted? I had no idea, so embarassing as it was, I had to ask one of these Swiss ladys, which were running around and giving support. Continuing to the baggage drop off: Have you already payed your sports luggage? Eehm, no? Great, one bag checked in, continuing to the next desk taking my skis with me: this would be 30.- CHF please! Because I didn’t want to start a discussion with the lady at the desk, I just payed the fee, and on it goes: Special luggage drop off. Finally we found the short italian guy with the pink shirt and I was ready for take off. Because I hadn’t much time remaining, everything now had to go really fast: going for lunch and through the passport control directly to the gate, where I could imidiately board the bus to the plane.
Only then, sitting in the plane, I realised slowly, that I was now heading to a country where I would understand nobody for a long long time. Because even though the finnish welcome was follwed by some swedish instructions, this didn’t help me much. But after my first finnisch kohavi on the plane I safely arrived in Helsinki, hoping that all my luggage, including my ski bag, was on the same plane with me.