A small hangup in Helsinki

"All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware." - Martin Buber

In my particular case, the secret destination was the center of Helsinki on the afternoon of September 6th. My flight plan called for me to fly out of O'Hare to Helsinki, then grab a connecting flight to Krakow. The O'Hare flight was on American and the Krakow flight on Finnair. The trouble started when I checked in at Chicago. I got an itinerary, but that itinerary did not list the second flight at all. This meant that my baggage was not going to be checked through, and that I'd have to go all the way out to baggage claim and re-check in Finland. I had an hour and a half to do so, so I wasn't overly concerned.

I did not anticipate the flight leaving three hours late. Before leaving, I talked to the gate agent about re-booking, and he said that there were two flights, one to Warsaw, the second a connection to Krakow, via LOT Polish airlines. This would put me in Krakow about 13 hours later than I had originally expected. This was the best option available, so I took the piece of paper that was proffered to me by the agent in Chicago and took his advice to hand that same piece of paper to an American agent in Helsinki, who would be able to handle the rest.

After getting to Helsinki at around 11AM local time, the gate agent first summoned me from the middle of the long line waiting for re-booking (something like 60% of our flight had missed connections). She said that my flight to Warsaw was leaving in 20 minutes. OK, great, here's my slip of paper. Well, on second thought, it isn't. Your flight leaves in 9 hours. Take this same slip of paper and hand it to the fine folks down at LOT when they open up their counter 2 hours before your 8PM flight. They'll know what do do with it.

I was able to make a call to Prof. Kowal, who was meeting me in Krakow, and I informed him of this "slight" change in plans. I then went though passport control, reclaimed my bags, talked with a very chipper (and very helpful) Finnish lady behind the counter of the Tourist Information kiosk in the airport, and changed clothing as it was a good 20 F cooler in Helsinki than in Chicago. I went down to the LOT counter in the other terminal in case anybody was there. Seeing nobody, I then found a locker, left most of my luggage at the airport, and took the bus into town in order to kill off about 7 hours of entirely free time.

 Helsinki felt like a few of the cities that I've been in in the Eastern Bloc, but much cleaner and tidier than any of them. I've taken to calling it "Eastern Bloc by Ikea." In a lot of ways it looked like a lot of the photos I've seen of St. Petersburg, Russia, and I understand that at least one movie had Helsinki as a stand-in for Leningrad, much to the consternation of the locals. This shouldn't be too surprising because a lot of downtown Helsinki was built in the early 19th century by the Russians as a grand provincial capital. Also notable was the sort of harsh, filtered quality to the daylight, even when the sun was out. I chalk this up to its being close to the pole. Though again I must emphasize, the place was very, very clean. Maybe I saw a piece of graffiti somewhere. Maybe.

What was perhaps most surprising was that there was this odd coexistence in the city between fantastic views and fantastic views of eyesores. The best example I can think of is that of a city park on an island accessible by a single pedestrian causeway. Look in one direction and you have the obligatory shot of Helsinki Cathedral poking its head above boats in a marina and a line of buildings that masks it. The whole spectacle is almost Venetian. Turn your head 90 degrees to the left and you see a couple of what I believe were icebreaking ships and what I know for a fact was a tugboat. Turn another 90 degrees to the left and what you see is a large stack of coal and an electrical plant across the harbor. Likewise, there's a nicely wooded park that looks out over a lake, one side of which gives a good view of the train station. But on the other side of the lake is an amusement park and a great view of a bunch of trains! I think Frederick Law Olmsted would have been shocked.

Anyway, after that it was back to the airport. I arrived in plenty of time and stood in line as the LOT counter opened. First, my bags were overweight and had to be lightened. You see, I had not planned to fly with this carrier at all and so had not packed accordingly. Second, that little slip o' paper I was given in Chicago and told to give to LOT in Helsinki didn't have a ticket number on it, and my name did not pop up in any of LOT's computers. Humm. So the agent at LOT sent me to the other terminal (Terminal 2) in order to talk with a Finnair representative. There unfortunately is no tram between the two terminals, so it was a good long hike with all my baggage.

On reaching the Finnair counter, that desk agent said she couldn't help, but if I went to the end of the counter and knocked on a door, someone might be able to help me out. She wasn't especially specific about which door that was, so I went all the way to the end of the terminal and knocked on a likely-looking door. Finding no response, I looked for another likely-looking door and didn't find one. I went back to the Finnair counter and asked for better specifics as to where said door was...which led me to knock on the door of what was probably the broom closet next to the door I actually wanted to knock on. After YET ANOTHER lady from yet another airline asked me what the hell I was doing, first in Swedish, I think, I finally knocked on the correct door. Mind you, the clock is ticking on my flight for Warsaw while all this is going on.

So, about an hour before the flight I explain my tale of woe to a Finnair supervisory type. She said that, in short, American screwed the pooch as I had not been dropped off of the connecting flight I missed earlier in the day. She would try to rebook me, but this could take some time as she needed to access American's system, and there were no American agents at the airport as they had all gone home when the last American flight left Helsinki some 5 hours earlier. The plane for Warsaw leaves in 1 hour at this point, by the way.

So, as I'm contemplating a night in Helsinki, I finally get some good news: the re-booking has been handled, and I should get over to, you guessed it, the LOT counter in the other terminal as fast as I could. I'll bet I set the Helsinki Airport record for the 200 yard dash with a full luggage cart, hiking boots, and backpack.

So, now that I'm at the other terminal, I can check in with LOT. Unfortunately, not only is my large bag overweight, but I'm only allowed one carry-on and no, my backpack is not a personal item. So, I have to check a second bag. And oh yes, the fees for all these things? They can't be paid at the ticket counter. I have to go find another counter which is effectively.......in...the other terminal. So, I hustle back over, this time divested of baggage, find the correct counter, and note with some dismay that I've got half an hour to get back to effectively where I just was, at roughly the LOT ticket counter, go through security, find the gate and board the plane. As I pondered that all this running about is an excellent argument for me to never start smoking, I was able to make it as security was just about empty. I had a well-deserved beer on the Warsaw flight, and the rest of the trip passed without incident.