Thursday, August 15, 2013

A Day in HEL

That's HEL (as in Helsinki).  Started out the trip to the former Soviet Union on August 2 and we flew into Oakland on the budget Allegiant flight from Eugene.  Our tickets on Finnair involved a nonstop to NYC, then onto Moscow with a connection in Helsinki.  Since the Russia trip didn't start until August 4th, we killed a couple of days in SF, with a great meal at Hunan's with old friends, then rested up for our flight by pretty much taking the 3rd off with only a small jaunt into nearly Burlingame.  Flight to JFK was uneventful, but we were delayed 90 minutes taking off for Helsinki.  With only a 35 minute transfer window in HEL, we knew we were in trouble and the connection stress was not ameliorated by the two screaming children across the aisle who pretty much screamed and cried through more than half the flight.  It would have been worse if I hadn't slipped some benadryl into their sippy cups.  At least the meal merited attention as one of the worst meals I've ever eaten on a plane.

Upon landing in HEL, we watched our Moscow flight taxiing onto the runway.  No help at all from Finnair regarding whether they would hold the flight or what would happen.  Obviously, they didn't hold it and the next flight wasn't scheduled for 9 hours.  They were nice enough to give us 70 euros for food, but 70 euros didn't go very far in the airport.  After our nine hour wait, we were further delayed by 90 minutes.  The Aeroflot flight was short and pleasant enough, though some of the other passengers were a bit unruly.  We touched down, cleared immigration quickly and proceeded to hurry down to collect our single bag.  We were in a hurry since the apartment rental agent in Moscow agreed to meet us late into the evening and we did not want to inconvenience him any further than we already had.  I rushed out to get some rubles while Suzee waited for the bag.  After a long wait, I had to sneak back into the baggage area to find out what was going on, since I had the luggage receipt.  Turns out the 10+ hours Finnair had to get our bags over to Aeroflot wasn't enough.  In fact, of the five passengers who flew into HEL from JFK, none of us received our bags.  Pathetic, Finnair, really pathetic.   Meanwhile, the clock was ticking and I was asked to fill out three copies for a claim, one of them in cyrillic.  I don't do too well in cyrillic and apparently the baggage claim staff doesn't have a copy machine.  The stress was mounting after 32 hours with no sleep and I was lucky that the customs guy (who stamped our forms) only jerked me around for 15 minutes.   We sprinted to the Aeroexpress train only to find we missed it by 2 minutes.  This involved a 28 minute wait and, worst of all, by the time we got to Moscow, the subways had stopped running.  Most guidebooks have two rules about taxis in Moscow:  1) Try not to use any taxi that isn't called by your hotel and 2) Never take a taxi at night.  Thankfully, Alexander, the apartment manager surprised us by showing up at the station and helping negotiate a cab to the apartment.  We finally arrived around 1:00AM, roughly 11 hours late.  This was my single worst day ever in travel, between the unexpected layover, screaming kids and lost luggage.

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