it all started last week during which I tried to learn how to ski up in the outer regions of finnish lapland in the snow bound regions of a lovely place called ruka.
throughout our stay we (me, wife, youngest, eldest, + four more from the finnish contingency of the family) connected to the goings on in the world via the ever necessary outpourings of the bbc world news tv channel.
[trust me .. spend time in front of a finnish tv and you will soon be very willing to pay double for your tv licence]
as the week progressed, and i managed to stay vertical on the 2 horizontal strips of ikea sanctioned designed strips of hi-tech plastic, it became apparent that our supposed escape plan on saturday was not going to happen due to some hot-n-bothered hill over in iceland.
subsequently, a family conference took part on the friday morning to figure out just what on earth those of us who were meant to return to the land of grey skies and coronation street were going to do.
of course i was not aware of the conference as i was in the other cabin playing uno with the kids cursing all things icelandic. yet despite my absence, a cunning plan was put in place.
we (me, wife) were to hire an extra car so that all of the tribe could make back to the town from which the finnish contingency came, turku, and from there we would connect to the internet and figure out the next part of the journey.
it all felt so clean and simple.
how very finnish.
calls were placed on mobiles to various car hire companies, and by chance our name was associated with the last car in town, albeit for a lovely 500 euro price tag.
saturday morning 8am, we, (me, wife, youngest, eldest), were up, packed, and looking forward to the 12 hour car journey covering the same distance as the length of our homeland.
as the hours passed, i saw the landscape change from 15 foot snow drifts, to swamplands, to 70s designed towns, to outer town shopping centres, with millions of tall straight trees in-between for hours on end, though with the added extras of wild reindeer being added to mix (as opposed to the menu like earlier in the week – but that’s another story).
and for all its monotony, the visual aspect of the experience was rather wonderful and moving.
sunday then meant internet excess as we (me, wife) tried to figure out what to do next.
as expected, our saturday flights had been cancelled, but we had been allocated seats on a flight for tuesday.
"glorious news", says i, "that puff of smoke will have blown over by then".
but we thought it best we make a back up plan, just in case.
train time tables were scoured, websites advising of the current chaos happening on the ferries became a source of fear and panic, and slowly and surely it began to dawn on us, that were we to be staying in suomi for quite a while longer than originally planned.
of course, one option would have been to chance our luck, fight the fight, get on board a ferry from helsinki over to stockholm, board the overnight train from stockholm to copenhagen and and then head for calais via various train routes in mainland europe.
now, such an adventure involving just myself and my beloved would have been rather exciting, and dare i say it, fun.
however, add 2 kids to the mix (13 yrs, 6 yrs), and that adventure soon descends into becoming a living nightmare as visions of being left high and dry in a spooked out train station at 3am with nowhere to stay due to a maxed out credit card began to flood our collective thoughts (all the more so as stories of such horrors were coming in thick and fast on the wire)
no, that option was the very last resort.
instead we decided to hang tough in the family residence (the finnish contingency have been beyond generous throughout this extended episode of life), and wait until the hill gave up its angry mood.
then monday morning i decided to chance my luck.
i went onto twitter, found the relevant tag that people were using and went on a rage session, advising all and sundry as to the appalling nature by which we had been treated by finnair.
oh sorry, did i not mention their response when we called for help/advise ?
silly me.
this is what they said : ‘this is a "force majeure", and so nothing to do with us’.
in other words, ‘you are on your own’
i tracked down the number of the local british consulate. left a message for him/her to call me back if possible. 26 minutes later, she rang back.
i explained our dilemma and asked if there was anything she could do (i basically said, ‘i’m calling you up, cos it says on the government website that i need to inform you of our presence here, it’s lovely to speak to you, but suspect you are going to tell us to get to calais like the rest of the world’)
1 hour later, she calls back. she had found a shipping company who at the weekend will have a cargo ship in turku port bound for harwich after a 3 day journey, and are willing to have 4 extras on board, and so wanted to know if we would be interested.
needless to say there was no family conference about my response to that question !
and that’s where things lie at the moment, we (me, wife, kids) are still embedded here in turku, while i’m using the 100mb internet connection to work as per normal, waiting for the klaxon to call us to dock and continue with our long long journey home.
while the rest of the eurozone is getting back to normal, suomi authorities have looked at the data available and decided to stay closed for any of the flying business today, with little detail for tomorrow and the weekend meaning the boat trip home is looking like our only way out of this groundhog day situation.
start : get up. shower. eat. check websites. check emails. check websites. wait for phone to ring. check websites. check emails. eat. watch bbc news. sleep : go back to start.
and that’s the end of the story so far.
well not quite.
remember me mentioning my twitter rage session ?
well, due to that uncharacteristic outburst i was contacted by a french journo, and ended up being written about on a french news website.
not only that, but following me mentioning our success at joining the finnish merchant navy (also on twitter ..), i was contacted by a uk based family member who heard the story as part of a news bulletin on 6 music.
all these years as a so called music blogger, and i get my biggest profile raiser due to some bad tempered rants about a grumpy hill in iceland.