Helsinki at dusk

Three flights later and I'm in Helsinki. It's just dusk now...at 2:30pm. I missed the original flight from Detroit to Amsterdam, but they rerouted me on a similar flight before I even left GSP. My new flight left just 2 hrs later than the original one so I had no trouble making my connections. It worked out even better actually since I only had to spend 2 hrs in Schiphol instead of the original 4 hrs scheduled. And certainly not 8 hrs like the last time we flew through here.

I meant to take a picture of the airbus interior but I was actually a bit too busy. Dinner, movie (Stardust), work, then second movie (Ratatouille), breakfast, and touchdown. All in a pretty fast 7 hrs in the air. One minor annoyance was that that little "bong!" sound when you hear when they turn the seatbelts sign off or on kept going off for no reason every few minutes. It was like Northwest flight meets Little Miss Sunshine. If you haven't seen this movie, there's a VW bus whose horn keeps going off every few minutes. Same thing here: "bong!", then a few minutes later "bong!". I kept looking up to see what the alert was about until I finally put on my headphones and drowned out the "bong!" with "Neighborhood" by "Space". Excellent song, and on headphones I finally started making what they're singing about. It's all about these strange tennants in this neighborhood. The last one I remember is "Mr. Miller, he's a local vicker and a serial killllleerrr." Well, it sounds better when Space sings it. Anyway, so listening to that song I managed to finish off my talk that I'm supposed to deliver in Tampere tomorrow. I think I'm ready.

So then coffee in Schiphol, then passport control and flight to Helsinki. I pretty much passed out on that one. They handed something out but I slept right through it. Just as well cause here I have to keep my wits about me to make sure I remember to pick up my luggage, check it in, etc. etc. It sounds simple but I'm a little hazy due to lack of sleep so have to think about these simple things to make sure I don't goof up. For example I checked in my bags with FinnAir whereas I was supposed to go to Finncom. Well, I didn't see their check-in booth down at the end of the terminal. Anyway, the FinnAir lady ticketed the bags no problem, so they let me off with that little blunder.

So, on to Tampere. Is this the kind of plane I'll be on? Probably not...just one that happened to be there. In all likelihood I'll be on a twin turbo-prop. It's just a half hour flight to Tampere so I don't imagine they'd be using a jet to get there. It's now 3pm and it's similar to what 5pm might be like at home at this time of year. Actually it's not quite as bad as I thought it might be. It's just as if they're 2 hrs ahead of us, or rather, their day is shorter by 4 hrs (less 2 hrs in the morning due to a later sunrise and less 2 hrs in the pm due to early sunset). But other than that, it seems ok. But then again I'm ready to fall asleep anyway, so it may as well be night :)