Dragon flies home

2 wasted holidays, 1000$ and 7000 km later, I am back from morbidly cold Ottawa, after a successful mission to apply for a new biometric Finnish passport.

Despite the protests of the Embassy and Consulate staff here in Canada, the Ministry of Finances did not approve the acquisition for suitable equipment for honorary consulates to progress passport applications, so I had to make the trip to sunny Ottawa, where they conveniently had the coldest day of the year thus far.

Since the application process itself took only 5 minutes, I spent 7 hours going around the Canadian capital, seeing the sights such as the Parliament Hill and the museum of Nature.

Amongst the sights of Ottawa I wanted to visit was the Royal Mint where the famous Gold Maple Leafs are produced, and thus, armed with a map of the Canadian capital, I marched up the Rue Sussex. Along halfway there, I thought I’d found the Royal Mint. It was a huge, forbidding building, surrounded by a fence with razor-sharp tips, guarded by soldiers and with a single doorway with a state-of-the-art metal detector. It looked like a fortress. And that building –you guessed it – was the Embassy of US, as I found out once I got a bit closer.

Once I got to my destination, the Royal Mint was extraordinarily cool, with piles of gold bullion everywhere, and they even allowed us to lift some bars that cost 300 000$ each. I also found out that my weight in gold is almost exactly 13,5 million dollars.

The rest of the day was spent in Art Galleries and museums, finishing with the Museum of Nature, which, while still under construction was an excellent experience. I especially liked the dinosaurs (it is nice to notice that child within me is not yet dead), though experience was somewhat ruined by hordes of screaming kids. I bought an ancestor as a gift for kolibri, and headed back to the airport.

I enjoyed my day in Ottawa, but I did not enjoy wasting two of my holidays on it, and spending all that money. Ministry of Interior and Ministry of Finances will receive a letter from me in the near future. I don’t know how much weight one citizen’s outcry will carry, but I really think someone in Finland should look at the map of Canada and realize what a huge country this is. I would have rather paid triple price for the new passport than have to fly all the way to Ottawa to get it, as pleasant city as it was.