Chapter 1: Getting out of Finland for the Holidays.

This is the first post of what will hopefully be a multiple-part entry about how the Christmas holidays unfolded on this blessed year, 2010. I use some sarcasm with the blessing, but I have to say that besides the actual travel, the time we spent standing still with the familiar faces I missed so much was well-worth the wait.

Our journey actually began a day early, on Monday December 20th. Juha and I woke up around 8am and headed to work. Between 7pm and 8pm, we both got home and were pretty lazy about packing. Actually, I'm pretty sure Juha got home and had to leave again. We did a pretty crappy job of packing ahead of time and we still had the company car to drop off and a puppy to visit. We ended up cat napping until about 12:45am, before Juha got up, had a shower and called us a cab. We took the 1:45am bus to Helsinki and got there around 4am. The airport doors were open but there was no one at any of the check-in counters to take our bags. We waited an hour or so before dropping off our bags and heading through the security check. Our flight was supposed to leave for Frankfurt at 6:30am but around 7am, the pilot got on the loud speaker and told us the weather situation was bad in Frankfurt. About 15 out of the usual 50 flights an hour were permitted to land so there was no way we were taking off before 10am. More details were to follow around 8am. Meanwhile, we got food vouchers of 10e each. Juha slept on the floor like a log...

We ran into a friend of mine from school, Oscar, and another from summer university, Tomas. Tomas, Juha and I went to have a second breakfast. At the same time, we were checking our flight status incessantly and couldn't help but notice it had disappeared from the board. We went to the transfer terminal to find out what had happened and we were told the 8:30am (or something) flight to Frankfurt had been cancelled. The 6:30am passengers were to stick around because there was still "hope" for our flight. Funny story... our flight got cancelled after everyone from the 8:30am flight lined up and no one even told us!

When the line cleared up, we talked to a Lufthansa person (the only competent and really nine one around, if I may add.) The people before us had pretty much exhausted all our options (and thank God we didn't pick up our luggage and line up at the ticket counter like we had been instructed to but didn't know.) We were told that there was no way to get to Toronto that day... so we started looking into ways to get over the Atlantic, if at all. It seemed that every single flight going from Europe to North America was booked solid. We were even told that getting to Vancouver on time, by December 25th, did not seem possible. We finally decided that the best option would be to fly to St. Petersburg, then transfer to Moscow before leaving for Toronto the next day. This was pretty much our only option, unless we wanted to go hang out at a hotel for the next week in Helsinki and end up nowhere. There was some concern about where we would sleep since we couldn't leave the airspace but we knew some airports had services to escort those without a visa to the hotel 500m away, where we could spend the night.

We picked up our bags and headed for the check-in desks in the other terminal. The woman at the counter couldn't get the proper tags to print so she wrote them by hand. I also bought a lock the moment I heard we were going to Russia; I didn't want to take any chances with my luggage. I was a bit nervous about this baggage tag issue too but figured it would work out. We were supposed to ask at the desk about our bags every time before boarding a plane, with the exception of the Helsinki to St. Petersburg flight.

So we got all our papers in order, went through security and passed through passport checks. We got on our plane to Russia and flew there... it was only 50mins. You could see the communist slabs of concrete from the plane... tall, blasphemous buildings from any architect's point of view. The city looked huge and the buildings were identical even when 20km apart. As we landed, I counted 9 trucks - at least 5 of them plows driving together down the parallel runway. I remember thinking: "We sure came to the right place. These people know how to deal with snow." We landed and walking into the terminal: a cold, enclosed space full of employees walking around in green uniforms. Not to seem ignorant, but it felt a lot like a communist country we'd just stepped into. The signs were unclear about where we should head and our only option seemed to be going through customs... which was not an option. We asked a lady at the service desk for help and she checked our passports. We explained our reasons for coming to Russia and she looked at us blankly, looked at our passports again and said "To Russia? Without a visa..." She didn't seem particularly concerned but there was no way we were getting through to Toronto via this route. We followed her down the stairs and watched as our passports switched hands about 7 times before someone came to talk to us. There were a few uniformed women around us whispering and gossiping in Russian around us, presumingly about us. At one point, another woman was calling us over in Russian and motioning towards the customs counter. We figured our passports were with her. She spoke to us in Russian and we asked if she spoke English. She said she did but looked at us with little patience... "Passports!?" (as if we were idiots.) We quickly realized we were not supposed to be there and turned away towards the terminal. The first woman came back and took Juha with her to the baggage claim area. We needed to pick up our bags with supervision because we were not allowed into the country. I sat and waited for Juha. When the two came back, bags in hand, we were asked us to sit and wait. A nicely dressed man came over from 'Russia' (the other side of customs) and spoke to us in excellent English. He was the representative from Finnair and apologetically, he told us his job was to escort us out of the country. We lugged our suitcases back up the stairs (the escalator was broken that day) before going through security again (it was especially intimidating considering our surroundings) and having our bags tagged and carried back on the plane. The plane was waiting for us since, by law, if you are denied entry into Russia, you have to go back on the same aircraft you came on.

What was first a fairly empty flight over ended up being packed on the way back. Juha got some shut eye, while I was entertained by a tiny 3 year old Korean girl who was fidgeting with her surroundings while her mom slept beside her.

We made it back to Helsinki within the hour, grabbed our bags, and went to line up at the ticketing counter for the first time that day. My friend Oscar was still there, and ended up being in that line for 13 hours that day before calling it a night and heading back the next morning. Luckily, we ran into the same woman who booked us to St. Petersburg. She was exhausted after being at the airport about as long as we had but before heading home, she booked us at an airport hotel for the night.

We later found out that there were 2 problems with the Russia plan (and the woman did try to call the Russian border guards but apparently they had the wrong number because no one who picked up spoke any English, let alone Finnish.) The first problem was that, although we are allowed to fly into Russia if we don't leave the airspace, we can not fly domestic within Russia. For that, you need a transfer visa. We had tried finding a flight direct to Moscow, but it would've arrived after our connecting flight left the next day and that would've been pointless. The second problem was that there are two different airports in Moscow... or St. Petersburg.. but I'm pretty sure the problem was in Moscow. Domestic flights land at one airport, and international flights at another. We then would've had to transfer within the city, outside the airspace, and that would've been illegal. Also, apparently even Russian people wouldn't do this because the cab drivers are swindlers and would rip off even other Russians... there's no good way to get between those two points... with or without a visa.

We managed to have dinner at the hotel - after not eating all day - and intended on going to the airport first thing in the... well, dawn. Sadly though, there were no buses between 1:30am and 5am and we didn't want to be the last to show up for the line up so instead, I stayed up late and called Air Canada on Skype. The first time I waited on hold in the queue for 45 minutes, I started falling asleep to the music so my dad offered to keep me awake by chatting. Finally, someone picked up and was very patient, considering the fact that he couldn't hear me at all. I'm guessing lots of people were calling over the internet that day and he understood that technical difficulties were an added problem. Finally, after 5 minutes of scrambling around, I hung up feeling defeated. All that time spent waiting for nothing... I tried to call my dad a few times before finally fixing the microphone... and I set about calling Air Canada again...

I also tried calling the Elite line to tell them that both my parents were Elite and that I'd already spent 45 minutes waiting. Turns out the number my dad gave me was the number for Aeroplan, Air Canada's frequent flyer program, instead. I tried to ask him for the number I was trying to reach and he told me it would jeopardize his career. I wrote him off as an asshole (though I kept that to myself) and tried to get off the phone with him as fast as possible. He did, however, gave me the number for the special hotline for stranded passengers, which wasn't available (or clearly visible) anywhere on the Air Canada website.

I called that number and chose to speak in French. I was quickly transfered to a really nice man, THANK GOD, who asked me about the origins of my last name. "Is it French?" I told him no, that I was Romanian, and he said "We can speak in Romanian then!" (in Romanian.) This was a great relief and he seemed eager to help too. We checked out our options and he said oversea flights were overbooked so this would be a problem. I asked him to look at less crowded airports, like Warsaw or any other less-known airports that would have direct flights to Toronto or anywhere in Canada or the US. He then came up with this itinerary: on December 22nd Helsinki - Tallin - Copenhagen - Zurich - and Toronto on the 23d. I also had his email in case we needed anything along the way, I could get in touch with him.

I then managed to fall asleep, reassured that we had at least some hope of getting home... but whether for better or worse, the plans would change again before we managed to get there...but that's another story ;)