The long version

Must. Stay. Awake. (Not very successful...)

Ok, long(er) version of "how things went wrong again" i.e. the trip back home.

In Helsinki airport we found out that the limit of "one suitcase can weight only 32 kg max" does exist and is enforced. So I had to open my suitcase in the check-in, and move 3 kg worth of stuff to a new bag (our third). And this was the point my trusty 8-year-old Samsonite decided to resign, and the lock broke - we got it open, but it wouldn't close anymore. Dragon managed to use some excessive force and get it to close, but we had to break it to get it to open at home... time for a new suitcase. The only good thing about this incident was that at noon on a Friday Helsinki airport was practically empty, and we had a very nice and patient attendant who gave us time to get the suitcases sorted.

Flight to London was uneventful and on time - which was very good, because Heathrow was a mess. We had about hour an a half to change planes and after last time we knew that we had to go through quite a lot, so we half-ran to the security checks... only to be stranded in a sea of non-moving people who all had planes to catch. Some people tried tricks to skip the queue - "Please let me through, you're not doing a transfer are you?" (er, yes we are, as are all the rest of the hundreds of people sweating here), "I have a BA flight, can I fast-track?" (good one - on Heathrow), "My plane is leaving in half an hour" (yes, they had my sympathies but no one was skipping this one).

This pile was only the queue to get to the security check queue though, and after about a half an hours wait we got to the proper queue. It was hot, people were annoyed and worried, trying to hide the fact that they had more than one hand luggage. We both had only one this time, but queues were so bad I think they let this one slide today... oh well. At least my gold rings were not beeping this time and after queuing for another half an hour we got through the checks without any incidents and ran to the bus that took us to terminal 4. Then running though the airport as our flight had already started boarding... only to find out that it hadn't, then waiting in line, then waiting in the plane - and leaving an hour late.

We were lucky with the seats though - right in the back of the plane, isle seats too. And we were sitting in front of Dragon's colleague who was coming back from his Christmas holidays, but hadn't gotten a seat together with his wife who was sitting somewhere 30 rows in front of us - so we had it just fine. There was a small child behind us who was relatively quiet, but kept kicking our seats. There were lots of kids in the plane, actually - including a children's choir from Uganda (but they were brilliant, I never saw more well behaved kids). Another uneventful flight, I slept most of it. My cold was making me fairly miserable - I can tell you this much: there's nothing like coming from 11 km down to open up your sinuses, but it'll also hurt like hell and make your nose bleed. It happened on both landings, yay for traveling when ill.

Bad thing about sleeping on the plane was that when I woke up it was about 4am in Helsinki and my body was very adamant that this was no time to be waking up, and when I did it retaliated with a stomach ache and nausea. And we had to re-take the landing when coming to "very windy" Vancouver - first time we had landing gear out and were fast approaching the runway when I could feel us taking up again, and soon the captain announced that there was apparently debris on the runaway and that we had to fly around for a bit until they cleaned it up. The only thing that made this bearable was the cheery though that there was a Hatchimaki and his crew somewhere down there making landing safe for us (ok, too much Planetes... still, the captain's announcement about debris made me giggle).

So we arrived about an hour late. The great thing about Vancouver airport and coming to Canada is that it's never painful. We cleared the passport control very quickly, and got our luggage (all of them, in one piece, closed) in record time. Then just catching a taxi and getting home.

On our was home I couldn't help noticing that there was piles of snow around. Great, we spend the Christmas in pitch black Helsinki where temperatures were the warmest since the records begun, and it has been snowing in Vancouver. Our neighbor reported that the snow collapsed the roof of the stadium that is supposed to be housing the winter olympics, great work guys... but needs some improvement as they say.

It's good to be home. I'm at home at my parents', but home is always home.

You can't add any more comments, but if you wish you can email the author.