Orienteering my way to Finland

(Bit of an excerpt from Attackpoint with more added)

Flight from Philly!

I was meant to leave for WOC on July 2nd and well this was not how I was planning the day to go! So was supposed to fly out at 10pm Philly time (to London then Helsinki then Kuopio). I however got a lovely email that morning though saying that my flight was delayed until 0800 the next morning! Well that just wasn't going to work and I was freaking out! I wasn't done packing and had a few things left to do in Philly. Thankfully though my parents are the greatest! Dad started having a look at other flights I could ask to get transferred to, mom helped me quickly pack and get an essay finished. And then mom and I headed to the airport for 2pm to see what could be done. As the lady on the phone was useless and couldn't even figure out that I couldn't make a 1200 flight while being on the phone with her at 1100. Then she said I couldn't do anything about missing my flights to Helsinki and Kuopio because that was a different round trip booking than my London flight. It was an "OH DEAR!" moment.  Thank goodness for a lovely guy Jeff at BA as he sorted everything out and rebooked me on all new flights! So I was thankfully still on my way to WOC! 

Frankfort Airport deserted!

So I have now been on a flight to Frankfort. I however was now flying two different airlines so I couldn't get my bag checked all the way through :( So had to go through boarder control, wait for my bag, change terminals to find the finair check in desk and recheck my bag. This is when I found a pretty empty airport! And it stayed that way until about 10am (I arrived at 6am). Spent about 6hrs there. I was in line basically right as the check in desk opened, and checked bag all the way through and got tickets. Well that was fine but security was touch and go for a bit and I had gone straight there. Like seriously thought I was going to miss my flight after sitting in the airport for 5hrs already! LESSON LEARNED: just take out the kindle even when they say you don't need to as your bag will get searched but you will be stuck in a que behind newbie travelers that apparently don't know what a liquid is! like seriously people perfume, toothpaste, hand sanitizer, lip gloss, mouth wash, ALL liquids! But heyho I made it through and got to my gate in time, even managed to get a croissant for breakfast :) 

So managed to get to Helsinki and Kuopio with no problems. Met a lovely Fin in Helsinki and we had a nice chat about the Kuopio airport and flies and he even knew about WOC which was cool! I then got to Kuopio and ended up having to wait about 5.5hrs before Wyatt showed up to pick me up in a car (he had been driving up from Helsinki). So spent the time on the internet which was fine and reading my book. But the main issue was the airport was SOOOO small. It did have a cafe but it wasn't open, and the vending machines would only take coins which I didn't have yet only notes. There wasn't even really anyone around to get change from. So needless to say I was a very hungry Alison while on skype to colm worried as to where wyatt had gotten to. But it was all good I got picked up.


Wyatt and I then still had about a 2hr drive further north to Vuokatti to the cabin. This is where we found out that it REALLY doesn't get dark out. Like not even for a half an hour. You couldn't even really tell it was midnight when we were driving that we found it very funny to be saying "Happy 4th of July" to each other already. Decided that Fireworks would stink here as you wouldn't see them! Anyway after a stop to get me a burger for dinner, and then a little bit of navigating issues right at the end we finally arrived at the cabin 2am July 4th Finish time (+7hrs from philly). 


So I've basically had to orienteer my way to woc but hey great warm up right!?