Espoo

April 5th, 6th & 7th, 2010

I'm yet to get over the fact that I finally got to step out of the southern part of India.
Except for the take-off, nothing really was exciting about the flight to Frankfurt. The below-par economy class seats in the Lufthansa airline were not nearly enough for me to take a nap. Besides that, I was sandwiched between two people who didn't take more than an hour since take-off to fall asleep. So, stretching my legs was out of question.

Naresh, Satish and I had to stop by the Franfurt airport en-route to Helsinki. The break between the 2 flights was about 5 hours. It is easy to notice that the Fraport is one big airport with lots of people in and outside of it. I had to drop my plans to step outside the airport briefly before checking-in for my next flight because of the tiring journey from Bangalore to Frankfurt.

The 2 hours flight from Frankfurt to Helsinki was very nice though. It was a relatively small air-plane and fortunately, I got a seat next to a window. However, the airline didn't have any vegetarian food, which left me starving but, it wasn't much of a hassle.

The Helsinki airport is relatively small when compared to Fraport or BIAL. But the thing to notice here is the weather, the ice-cold breeze pricking every bit of the exposed skin. It was about 2 degrees centigrade outside.

The company had booked a room at Stayat for each one of us and unlike most of the other hotel rooms I've seen before; these rooms looked exactly the way they're portrayed on the hotel website, very nice. "Stay At" is located in a locality which goes by the name "Leppävaara" and the Nokia office is at "Karaportti" which, I guess, is about 5Km from Leppävaara. The local trains are the fastest mode of transport between these places.

It rained and snowed for the next 2 days making it difficult for us to find our way around. However, it'll be spring soon.

Another thing, apart from the weather, that varies a lot from Banglore, is the population. This city lacks people! The only place where I found some was at the local train stop. This is probably because Espoo is a very small part of the town. I'm planning to go to Helsinki over the next weekend to see if I can find the usual "City buzz".


From right to left:-
Pics 1-5: Room
Pics 6 & 7: View outside the room
Pic 8: First dish in Finland ;)
Pic 9 & 10: The local train
Pic 11 & 12: Way to office
Pic 13: The Nokia office