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Departure from Helsinki Day 20 - 01-July

The
Everything must end sometime. And I definitely know that I need to return to Scandinavia another time. I am happy that I have been to Finland, but I have seen enough of it now. Norway and Sweden are a different story, I definitely MUST go back here some time in summer.

I still have the full morning in Helsinki as my flight will be leaving in the afternoon. I heave a nice breakfast and pack my bags, it's quite difficult to get it closed. I leave Finland without trying the typically Finnish tradition to take a sauna in the morning. but I am not really tempted by the idea of sweating in a hot cabin and cooling of in cold water. I leave the sauna for what it is. Many of the people I have met questioned if someone already tried out the sauna. Apparently everybody is hesitating taking one.

One of the mysteries in Finland I still don't have an answer for. What are those strange metallic bolls doing at every corner of the street?

In the town I store my backpack in a locker at the station and I have until 13:00 before I will be leaving for the airport. I want to check-in early and have a good look around the airport. In the city I am looking for some gifts to bring home but can't find anything. But considering the fact that my backpack is completely full I can't bring much with me anyway. I take a good look around the town before leaving and find a large bookstore with english, swedish and finnish books. There are a lot of Dutch courses to be found in this store which I find quite funny. Dutch isn't exactly world language number 1, though it's spoken much more then Finnish. I find a cheap English-Swedish dictionary which might be useful for my study of the language, unfortunately there are no Dutch versions available.

Keep of the paths, stay on the grass. A green avenue in Helsinki, where the maypole is still standing.

Helsinki-Vantaa Airport cannot be reached by train, and so I need to take either a cab or a buss to it. I take the buss to the airport. The windows in the bus don't give a nice view to the outside of the city because the windows are covered with a big billboard. From the inside you look through a grid, but the only thing you see is the motorway towards the airport. And after a few minutes the bus stops at the airport terminal.

The check-in opens 2 hours before the flight leaves. But it's not open so I wait a little bit more. The signs in the terminal don't indicate any check-in desks for the flight to Cologne. But after I walked around a bit I suddenly see a check-in desk for Cologne. And so join the line of people waiting to check-in. I have put every piece of iron in my coat and the metal detector doesn't respond when I walk through this time. In Cologne they started checking quite thoroughly after I left my watch on.

Going home

Travel details: Helsinki-Vantaa - Cologne-Bonn Flight type: Airbus A320 Germanwings Flight: 4U 285 Departure:15:40 - Arrival:17:05 (local times) Distance: Approximately 1500km

I arrive well in time so I can get a window-seat in the aircraft. But I forget about time after I have checked in because I am walking through some tax-free shops. When I look at the departure monitors I see the message "now boarding" for my flight. I hurry to the gate and get a window-seat because the flight is not that very full. From the sky you can see all the isles and lakes of Finland, and after a while there is just the Baltic Sea and a lot of clouds. An hour later we are flying over the Danish Isle Bornholm and another hour later we arrive in Cologne, 10 minutes early. Cologne looks huge from the sky, and with 1 million inhabitants it's twice as big as Oslo and Helsinki.

In flight above southern Finland, the small dark spots in the left corner are isles.

In the rush-hour my father drives me back home to the Netherlands. Cologne is just one hour driving but with so many people on the road, things start getting congested but after 2 hours I get home.

Just a few hundred meters to the Dutch border.

Back in the Netherlands
The sun is quite low already and I need to get used to the fact that it is dark after 22:00 in the evening. I immediately download all the photo's on my PC, nearly 300 pictures I took and they all look very nice. The LCD screen of my digital camera showed overexposed pictures, but on a PC screen everything looks much better. Though I should take more pictures next time, and take extra batteries with me. In Bergen and Stockholm my batteries went low and I couldn't take half as much pictures as I liked to. At least that is a good reason to go back to Scandinavia.

Though it is quite hectic to travel around for 3 weeks and you don't get much sleep, I feel amazingly relaxed. Relaxed enough to take another trip, but that will be another time. Hopefully very soon........