Do you know the way to Tam-per-ay?

The flight back from Barcelona was an interesting adventure on Sunday. We left Amsterdam at 11.00 and were set to arrive in Helsinki at 13.30, but just as we were landing and nearly grazing the top of the trees, the pilot pulled the plane up suddenly and aborted the landing. I was a bit unsettled as I figured we had just had a near miss with another plane in the low-visibility snow storm. We circled for a while and tried again with the same result. After about 20 minutes, the pilot informed us that we would be flying to the happening town of Tampere, about 2 hours northwest of Helsinki.

We arrived in Tampere to more snow and a long wait. The ground crew popped by with a ladder to have a chat with the KLM crew but, after a while, they sealed us back in and there we sat, and sat, and sat. The crew didn't offer us so much as a bag of peanuts or glass of water while we whiled away the afternoon and early evening. I was on the phone to Jarkko trying to figure out what was going on and for train schedule information for the near certain train ride home. After a while the pilot informed the restless passengers that in an hour or so we would try landing at Helsinki again and, if we didn't manage to land, we'd be heading back to Tampere. He wandered back through the cabin at some point to guage how close to mutiny we all were and he casually mentioned that he hadn't ever flown into Helsinki before. What was KLM thinking when they put a pilot inexperienced with Helsinki into a flight bound to run into the snowstorm that had been raging since the night before?

Fortunately, the pilot got the drift that we were all ready stage a coup by 6p and decided to let us off the plane. Of course, we had to wait an hour for the stairs but we were finally free. KLM was arranging for a bus to come up from Helsinki but that would have taken all night and the train was only 20 euros and got me into town by 21.30.

I got the pictures back from the lab today and hope to put a few of them up over the weekend.

6 Feb 2004 at 1:43, Helsinki