My ‘first’ foreign visit - to Finland.
Inspite of the ‘first’, well, honestly, I wasn’t very excited about it. I don’t know why! There was a bit of happiness, but that wasn’t giving any heavy sighs or goosepimples.
It was an ‘Integration camp’ at Nokia planned for a week or two, starting Nov 1, 2005, at Tampere – a small town near Helsinki. Participants – Sravan and myself. The agenda was very simple – do some integration and fix bugs :)
Did some passive shopping – this & that, some MTR ready to eats, winter clothes (it was TRUE december winter in finland) etc etc. (I am not going to elaborate my shopping, for a very obvious reason :)) Documents, passport, euros, invitation letter- Yes, I was ready, comfortably, without any last minutes, on time!
Itinerary? Very simple: Bangalore to Mumbai, change airport, bear all the confusion, wait, do tp at midnight - Mumbai to Zurich (switzerland), run run ruuunnn.. catch Zurich to Helsinki.. meet Marcus at airport. Catch train – Helsinki to Tampere. Phew!
Mumbai to Zurich (swiss air) was exciting. I was awake all night, monitering the live map on the display continuously. The plane was somewhere over the Alps (WOW).The outside temperature read –75° C (yeah minus, and not farenheit). Deadly! Ofcourse, it was + inside.
When we landed at zurich, it was 6:00 am. The airport ground was full of ice. Outside temperature: zero degrees celcius! We felt the chill as we passed down the duct from the aircraft.
Alas! I had landed my foot over a foreign land (a ‘first’)!! It wasn’t excited that it was an other country, but was, for the fact that, I was in another geography, so so so so far away from India, in a paradise country, closer to arctic.. crossing many seas, deserts, so many cultures – the paks, the afghans, the isrealis, the uzbeks…!! I was overjoyed.
Enter Zurich Airport. Marvellous. Brilliant design. Grand. Looked brand new and as easy to use as a nokia phone! We loved it. Took some snaps in the limited time available.
* * * * * We were on our way to Helsinki - to the Land of Thousand Lakes – Finland. It started to get dimmer and dimmer. Look below… what do you see? Is it a frozen sea? Are they snow mountains? Clouds? NOPE… you just cant make out! Just a white.. err.. ‘globe’ below! Btw, where are we heading now (, captain)? North Pole?
North Pole :)[I don’t know how the pre-historic homosepian ended up here and lived in this extreme! I wonder if he was too lazy to migrate? May be he wanted to just ‘chill’ out].
* * * * *
Marcus picked us up from the Helsinki airport and dropped us to the railway station. We boarded a train to Tampere.. a 3 hour journey. This was the part of the journey for which I had high expectations. I wasn’t disappointed.
ICE, ICE, ICE . ICE all around! All around! Upto the horizon…- the continuum… - the sky which wasn’t any different in colour, mesmerized me! I could imagine how much, the colour WHITE was part of their life!
And, I was seeing people from a different race – very different. I was seeing how they behave, speak.. the kids, the teenagers, the adults, the elderly.. all NEW to me (a ‘first’)… it was a paramount experience!!
* * * * *
At Tampere, we were put up in a hotel Scandic located just in front of the railway station. The hotel was very good.
Our daily schedule was:
· A good breakfast (bread, vegetables, fruits, juices) at the hotel.
· Go to Nokia office (At Tieteentatu) in the city bus.
· Work till evening.
· Return back to hotel.
· Have a stroll if willing to.
· Have beer (;)) + dinner (french fries @ McDonalds) on the way back to hotel
· Watch finnish channels on tv.
· Go to bed.
Winter is definitely NOT the time to visit Finland (See here). The weather was soooooo dull that I almost thought of committing suicide (seriously :)) There used to be a dim light at 10 am - a little bright at noon - dark by 3pm…. How do these people live here? Thursday: we had a camp dinner at an indian restaurant (very much indian). Some spice for my itching tongue, at last! I ate like I had fasted for a month (whose father what goes!). The finnish & japanese friends, turned pink (sorry, pinker). But they liked it.
The camp ended on Friday. We planned to shop a bit on Saturday. Mmann, things were really expensive, even the nokia phones! We decided not to buy anything. We only got a few boxes of popular finnish chocs.
* * * * *
The itinerary, back, was the same. The plane started late at Helsinki because of some technical difficulties. We were told that the connecting plane would be delayed too (as there was hardly any time for transit).
Anyway, we enjoyed the journey. Mixed with happy emotions of returning home, the sunrise at the horizon of the.. err.. ‘white globe’ was ECSTATIC.
The landing at Zurich was good too. The weather was much much better (sunny). Just as the plane descended sloowwwly amidst the multi-storied clouds, there.. the scene was getting clearer.. Yes, I was seeing the green fields… buildings here and there.. (just as we cruised closer) .. lovely big villas.. lanes.. Beeeauutiful. I could imagine how beautiful it would be, to be riding a cycle.. over those.. [pointing] over those.. green mountains, on such a bright morning.. WOW. I was almost peeping out of the window. We missed our connecting flight from Zurich to Mumbai. After all the confusion at the help desk, after checking all the next flights to India, we learnt that we had to stay in Zurich for another day (in a hotel, ofcourse) and catch the next flight tomorrow.
Strictly speaking, we were only 10 mins late. They COULD HAVE delayed the connecting plane. What did they want? support swiss tourism?
We were in no mood to go see places. We decided to stay in hotel all day. [Many of my friends were furious for not making use of the opportunity. Well, I answered them: “May be, next time” ;)]. The food was once again, horrible! Oh GGHOD! It made me feel I was cursed to be born veggie.
We watched TV all day. Mr. Bean brought some smiles on our faces.
Okay… Next morning.. finally.. were are going home! Hurray!! We reached airport 3 hrs early (making it highly improbable that we miss the flight again). We were having a stroll and I saw a duty free swatch shop. Bought two swatch watches: for my bro and sis.
…Swatch watches bought at Zurich airport…. Priceless!
@Swatch shopSo… BYE BYE SWITZERLAND.
I wish I had
Well… Its not that hard for you to imagine, how happy I would have been to land in Bangalore.. in a BRIGHT, early morning! Welcome back!! Home Sweet Home.