Finland 2012: Going Straight to HEL (July 9th, 2012)

From January to April of 2012, I traveled throughout India, mostly because I felt I had been challenged to do so on my previous trip through Myanmar.  India hadn’t been my first choice destination until that time.  But as an ego-driven Leo (or so astrologists would say), the dare was too much to resist.

July 2012, I find myself in Finland.  Why?  Because the road from India led there in no uncertain way.

Cecilia and I met in India earlier this year and traveled together there. She lives in Vaasa (in Finnish, or “Vasa” in Swedish – big difference, I know), a smallish town of 60,000 people on Finland’s west coast. This will be my first visit to Finland.

Lately, I’ve been letting my travel destinations choose me instead of the converse.  Travel with / follow the people you meet and you’ll be happier and feel freer!

No trip is isolated.  And no trip need be just a vacation (I’m more interested in learning and making mistakes than just relaxing!). Each one can become a big part of life, the friends you’ll make and keep, and the direction your life may take.  Each time I go out, my world changes, and I change and grow, too.  I can’t get this type of energy by staying home and watching basic cable.

I thought I might never get to the Scandinavian / Nordic countries due to the cost of traveling there – Finland is the most expensive Eurozone country, and neighbor Norway (not in the Eurozone) makes Finland look cheap by comparison.  It’s sometimes tough to rationalize visiting places like these when your Dollar or Euro can go so much further in so many other countries.  Think of how long I could get by in Costa Rica (et al) for the same cost!

For Finland to work, I needed an in, and a travel buddy.  And I found both in one!  So Finland it was.

My initial, unformed goal for a trip to northern Europe was to meet up with Cecilia in Denmark to attend Roskilde Festival.  Dates didn’t line up and work demanded attention at home during that time, so it didn’t happen.  But the dream wasn’t dead – we adjusted accordingly and made it work.

PHOTOS:  Just some of what I missed at Roskilde this year!

The updated plan:  I would fly into Finland in early July to spend a few weeks in Vaasa, and we would travel Eastern Europe together for a month from late July into August (countries still undecided at this point, but probably Estonia – Latvia – Lithuania – Poland – Czech).

A few activities/dates were pre-locked before I booked my ticket:

July 14^th, we’re attending the wedding of one of Cecilia’s friends in Kaskinen, a tiny town near Vaasa.  Accordingly I crumpled, balled and crammed a light grey suit, blue shirt and purple-banded tie into my backpack, and will be surveying her smallish-footed friends for size 42 dress shoes and potentially a matching belt to fill out the getup.

July 31^st I’ll be celebrating my birthday two days early at a Bruce Springsteen show in Helsinki with Cecilia and her father.

Reveal yourself, Bruce!

A schedule this time around?  Yes, sort of!  Not my usual free-agent grimy backpacking slog (not a complaint – just a different feel!).

Dad dropped me off at STL airport on the morning of July 9^th (thanks Pops!) and I left my hometown at 10:55 AM on a 45-minute American Airlines commuter jet bound for Chicago O’Hare. I felt like some kind of plainclothes secret agent.  Did the other passengers KNOW I was going to Finland?  Could they share in my excitement if they did (they probably didn’t care, but my self-interested brain would love to think otherwise)?

Dad: picking up pumpkins and dropping off sons at airports since 1980.

As usual, the previous night’s slumber came in difficult chunks.  A solution of joy, freedom and a little bit of fear (just a little) had started coursing through my veins the second I printed out my boarding pass.

Prior to every trip, these are the big steps that make an international trip more and more real:

• Submitting for a visa (unnecessary for US tourist visits to Finland)
• Receiving your passport back from the embassy complete with new visa (again, not applicable in this case)
• Buying a crisp new guidebook (usually Lonely Planet, sometimes a Rough Guide)
• Booking airfare (this is the big one!)
• Posting the (hopefully) jealousy-inducing “I’m going to _____” status update on social media
• Finalizing packing, aka leaving behind half the stuff you attempted to pack
• Printing boarding passes (it’s real, it’s real!)
• Going through security and boarding the plane, of course!

I always get that nice tingly feeling in my feet that I always get when I break away from home life and its accompanying everyday maintenance to find myself in a new and unfamiliar place.  It’s not always easy to leave, even when it’s the thing you want to do most.  Friends and family would like to have you home (no matter what they might say), and work constantly looms with a new promise/threat of another project or the loose ends of an old job.  Breaking away for months at a time and leaving everyone satisfied isn’t a given, but when you pull it off, it feels like you benevolently robbed a bank and left the tellers smiling and the manager wondering if she should really call the cops or not.

After a particularly boring four-hour layover in Chicago, it was time to get moving again on my one-way ticket to HEL.

Fitting that a woman in a saree should sneak into this (compositionally unimpressive) shot at Chicago O’Hare’s departure hall on my day of departure. India secretly knows it’s responsible for my trip to Finland! Suomi’s (Finland’s) flag plays deep, in the (geographically and politically incorrect) shadow of China.

Three weeks prior to departure, I found a strikingly inexpensive ticket to Helsinki – $676.00 US, one way.  When I have a clear idea of where I’m flying, my usual booking routine is as follows:

• Search ITA Travel Matrix and Kayak.com to get a general idea of what flights are available at what price.  ITA has a great search function for flexible dates, allowing one to search a full month of dates to see when prices are best.  Kayak’s “Explore” airfare map can help you search whole regions of airfare in a visual sense.  Good tools!
• Once I know what flight I’m interested in, I generally book direct through a carrier’s website, like AA.com or United.com, etc.  Booking direct means that if changes need be made, you’ll be dealing directly with the airline in question instead of through a go-between.  Plus, booking direct means no additional booking fees.  I generally avoid sites like Expedia and Travelocity for this reason.
• Another self-booking option:  go through a discount airfare site like Hotwire.com, Cheapoair.com or Priceline.com.  These sites sometimes make available cheaper restricted fares than direct bookings.
• Another option for bookings:  go through a reliable travel agent.  Yes, you’ll pay an additional fee of (for example) $25-50 on each booking, but agents offer greater flexibility and have ins and outs of travel booking that an individual does not.  In the past, I’ve been saved by travel agents when plans changed at the last minute.  Plus, if you hate booking fares yourself, this is an obvious choice.

This NY Times article offers some good advice on some other methods of checking fares and booking hotels as well.

I went with the third option this time, booking through Webjet.com, a discount airfare site that featured suspiciously low fares for my dates and places – in this case, $1500.00 US cheaper than booking direct with the airlines.   It felt too good to be true, but I went for it anyway with low expectations.

I sweated and refreshed my e-mail inbox for about 24 hours before Webjet returned ticketing confirmation to me.  Wow, it’s real, and it’s happening!

Soon, I would be done sweating altogether:  for most of the year, HEL is frozen over (ok, maybe just chilly), but Finland is at it’s nicest in July, when temperatures in the capital range from 11ºC to 21ºC (52ºF to 70ºF).

I apologize to any Finns that have already been through these endless jokes about Helsinki’s airport code. But if you think you’ve got a bum deal, Sioux City, Iowa goes by the call letters of SUX. Feel better?

Helsinki is the best place to enter Finland as far as international flight availability / prices go.  From there, grab your train or domestic flight and keep moving as you like.  My first step upon arrival at 8:30 AM on July 10^th was to grab a train to Vaasa – about a five hour ride for 60 Euros, one way.

Trains in Finland can be booked via the well-organized VR Group / Finnish Railways site.

Cecilia and I Skyped about ten days before I departed.  She was taking over my ground transportation arrangements.

“Don’t get on the train – I’ve arranged for your transport,” she smiled in a mysterious, knowing way.

My brain instantly sprang into motion.  Was a friend of hers picking me up?  Maybe her dad is (he lives in Helsinki)?  Was this a road trip?  Should I bring awesome mix CDs for a potential 262 mile drive between Helsinki and Vaasa?  What was going on?

Should’ve picked up some gems prior at this contradiction in Udaipur, Rajasthan, India.

We left it as a little mystery / potential nice surprise upon arrival.  She didn’t volunteer more information, and I didn’t push for it.  We shall see!  I have certain (definite) hopes, but not expectations.

I really don’t know what to expect of Finland.  If I had to guess based on the tiny amount I’ve read thus far, I’d say I’m in for:

• Sucking up more uninterrupted daylight than I’ve ever taken in before thanks to the high latitude of Vaasa at 63º N.  Nineteen hours a day in mid-July!
• Playtime on a body of water, as the Gulf of Bothnia borders Vaasa to the west and Finland contains over 180,000 lakes.
• Heavy coffee consumption, as Finland is one of the largest per capita consumers of coffee in the world at over 10 kg per year.
• Plenty of sauna time to sweat the coffee out if I’m not already perspiring from the coffee
• Tons of smiling-like-a-friendly-idiot while new friends and acquaintances switch gears between Finnish and Swedish mid-conversation.  Then, salvation when they kindly switch to English that’s probably better / wittier than my own.

With six hours left on my flight to Helsinki, I’d better try to sleep in hopes of being good company for the mystery person/thing that will be at baggage claim for onward conveyance to Vaasa.  It’d help if the chubby Angry Birds-shirted 13-year-old w/ buzz cut would stop flash bombing the plane full of tired people with the long-burning northern summer sun via his plastic window shade.

See you soon, Suomi!

Angry Birds, a “major export” of Finland thanks to Finnish firm Rovio.