{"id":461,"date":"2019-12-19T20:19:34","date_gmt":"2019-12-19T20:19:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/buenzliburg.ch\/ontheroadagain\/?p=461"},"modified":"2020-06-11T19:41:26","modified_gmt":"2020-06-11T19:41:26","slug":"floating-in-the-air","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buenzliburg.ch\/ontheroadagain\/2019\/12\/19\/floating-in-the-air\/","title":{"rendered":"Floating in the Air"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A different kind of journey with bluewhite wings, destination: Oulu, Finland <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Travel Diary:<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I paid a short visit to Finland recently. You know, just to get my share of fresh winter air, snow and Christmas magic which I did not manage to get from Finnish Christmas market (read the story here<\/a>). Okay, that was NOT really the REAL reason to my long weekend in the land of Santa Claus. Neither was it a meeting with Santa Claus to tell all the little nasty things my kids have been up to lately\u2026 No, the real reason was my dear grandma\u2019s 90\u2019Th birthday. Unless one wants to sit in the car for two days, getting there requires some flying. I don\u2019t particularly LOVE flying, neither have I any fear towards it. Some people refuse flying because of climate issues, I don\u2019t. Greta Thunberg can keep on floating on the waves, I do my share for climate in other ways (read more about that here<\/a>). For me flying is just a smooth, necessary thing in order to get from one place to another. As simple as that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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photo: pixabay
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This time I\nchose to fly with Finnair like I almost always do, whenever traveling to my\nsweet home country. Because they speak Finnish. And they sell Moomin products\non the plane. And serve blueberry juice, which is TRULY delicious. Yes, and they\ndo have direct flights to Helsinki and good connections elsewhere, which might\nplay a role in this too\u2026 So this time I was heading to Oulu, the capital of\nNorthern Scandinavia. That means, I have to fly to Helsinki and take a\nconnecting flight to Oulu. Piece of cake. I mounted my seat in the flying iron\nbird and up in the air we went. I got my share of delicious blueberry juice and\ndecided not to buy any moomin products from the airplane this time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In no time\nthe plane was landing to Helsinki-Vantaa Airport, and I went off searching the\nright gate for my connecting flight. How annoying, I thought when finding out\nthat it was late. Not much, but these things always seem to double or triple.\nUnable to do anything about it in spite of getting annoyed, I sighed and went\nfor searching a nice warm cup of coffee. Helsinki outside the window was as\ncold, dark and miserable as ever. I had plenty of time to finish up my coffee\nand even get a few refills until it was finally time to climb into another iron\nbird again\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally we\nwere all nicely stuffed into our seats (the plane was full up to its last\nseat!). Time kept steadily passing by as it always does. Flying attendants did\nall the preparations as always. Only the plane was not moving. After SOME MORE\nwaiting we heard the captain\u2019s announcement. Sorry about the delay, he said,\nbut our backup power supply is down. We need to wait for someone from outside\nto come and start the plane. An awkward quietness took over the plane. People\nwere staring at each other, probably thinking, what the\u2026.? Is this plane safe?\nAt least that is what I was thinking. The Pilot didn\u2019t seem too concerned about\nit, however. And FINALLY they got the engine running, with some help from\noutside. Only the iron cow was still not moving. After some ten or so minutes\nthere was another announcement from the captain: sorry again for the delay, but\nour computer just crashed. We need to restart it and it will take about ten\nminutes. He was about to say something more, but started laughing\nuncontrollably in the middle of the sentence and obviously couldn\u2019t stop\nanymore. Okay\u2026? I thought, he\u2019s probably having one HARD day at work..?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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photo: pixabay<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The\nmiddle-aged woman right next to me was turning very white from the face, and I\nmust admit Finnair was not getting any points from me either. I was almost\nseriously considering whether I should dismount this iron birdie. Too late.\nThere was another announcement saying we were finally ready to float up into\nthe air and head towards destination. The plane started moving, and lights\ninside of the plane were blinking. TV screens on the roof were opening\u2026 closing\u2026\nopening\u2026 and so on. You get the picture. The lady next to me looked like she\nmight jump out of the window any minute now. I tried to remember if any of\nFinnair\u2019s planes ever crashed, and to my great relief couldn\u2019t remember such a\ncase. I was pretty sure they wouldn\u2019t fly if there was a risk. Unless there was\nsome crazy fearless former fighter pilot in the cockpit. There\u2019s first time for\neverything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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photo: pixabay<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

We made it to Oulu. And it looked like winter wonderland, just like it is supposed to this time of the year. The Iron bird was still in one piece and performed a nice, soft landing on runway. The pilot rolled the plane towards gate and parked successfully. All the passengers sighed in relief. And then, the whole plane went dark. Totally dark. Black. The unreal darkness lasted a few minutes and then the lights came back. And there was another announcement from the captain: ladies and gentleman, sorry about that. Now when we are parked, we need to get some power from outside again. And someone just tripped over the power cord. Thanks for flying with us and have a nice evening! I couldn\u2019t believe what I was hearing. This time it was me who was laughing uncontrollably. Walking through the silent airport towards luggage belt, I secretly hoped I would not need to fly back home with this particular plane. It felt good to have feet on the ground again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Finland was great. And grandma\u2019s party was heartwarming. And the bluewhite wings were back on track on the way back. Cheers with blueberry juice! :)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A different kind of journey with bluewhite wings, destination: Oulu, Finland Travel Diary: I paid a short visit to Finland recently. You know, just to get my share of fresh winter air, snow and Christmas magic which I did not manage to get from Finnish Christmas market (read the story here). Okay, that was NOT …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,7,34],"tags":[66,37,65,71,45],"class_list":["post-461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fears","category-flying","category-traveling","tag-fear","tag-finland","tag-flying","tag-oulu","tag-traveling","entry entry-center"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buenzliburg.ch\/ontheroadagain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buenzliburg.ch\/ontheroadagain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buenzliburg.ch\/ontheroadagain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buenzliburg.ch\/ontheroadagain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buenzliburg.ch\/ontheroadagain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=461"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/buenzliburg.ch\/ontheroadagain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":681,"href":"https:\/\/buenzliburg.ch\/ontheroadagain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461\/revisions\/681"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buenzliburg.ch\/ontheroadagain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buenzliburg.ch\/ontheroadagain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buenzliburg.ch\/ontheroadagain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}