Sleep­ing In The Greyhound

Forty-seven hours. That’s how long it took us to come back from Beijing.

We left Mon­day morn­ing for the air­port. Secu­rity was pretty tight: as soon as we stepped in the air­port, a secu­rity offi­cer put some kind of wet towel on our bags to test them for radioac­tiv­ity. We were then asked to step aside for a few min­utes to see if it react. I’m yet not sure whether it’s a great way to pre­vent ter­ror­ist attack (think fifty peo­ple wait­ing for their bag to show signs of radioac­tiv­ity just meters from the doors) but I was glad to learn we were uranium-free.

The eight-hours flight from Bei­jing to Helsinki was a fairly easy one, but since we were going West and fly­ing dur­ing the day, it was hard to sleep. We arrived in Helsinki Mon­day at 2pm.

It had only been a few weeks since we came through Fin­land but it seemed like ages. The tem­per­a­ture had dropped dra­mat­i­cally to a low of five degrees and it was quite a shock after Beijing’s hot an humid weather.

We had a 24-hours lay­over in Helsinki and we learned last minute that the air­line wouldn’t pro­vide accom­mo­da­tion, as it is often the case. We asked the tourist info booth at the air­port for hos­tels but she said they were all booked. To add to our mis­ery, the cheap­est hotel in Helsinki was about 200 euro.

We decided to head to down­town Helsinki any­way and look for a place to stay. We ended up at the main train sta­tion, at another tourist info booth, where we learned that: 1) all places were def­i­nitely booked and the only hotel avail­able was 19 kilo­me­ters away and 200 euro/ night, 2) that we couldn’t call it because in Fin­land, there are no more pub­lic phones. Seri­ously. Appar­ently, Nokia took over and 99% of the pop­u­la­tion has a cell phone. Fuck the trav­el­ers and the poor people.

So we started to walk around, hop­ing to find an hotel any­way. Feng finally found one nearby, way too expen­sive for our bud­get but we didn’t have the choice. Sleep­ing at the air­port… been there, done that. We still had a long way to go. We checked in and spend the night freez­ing in “Hell”, as it said on our plane tick­ets. The hotel was nice and I enjoyed the sauna and the west­ern break­fast, plus we both got a good night sleep which is priceless.

The fol­low­ing day, we got back to the air­port to catch a 2pm flight to Ottawa. The plane was extremely small and cramped… on top of that, we scored the two seats by the plane’s door which meant that for the fol­low­ing nine hours the flight atten­dants kept on for­get­ting us when serv­ing drinks and food, that we weren’t allowed to keep our carry-on with us because they could block the emer­gency exit and we couldn’t recline the seats for the same rea­son. Yes, I did hate the flight.

We arrived in Toronto at 4pm and our Grey­hound bus to Ottawa was at 6:30pm. We rushed to take the air­port shut­tle and ended up walk­ing to the bus sta­tion because it was already 6pm by the time we got to down­town Toronto. When we arrived at the sta­tion, the bus was ready to leave, so we had no time to go to use the bath­room or buy some food, both things I needed badly.

The Grey­hound bus ride took almost six hours. We arrived in Ottawa at mid­night on Tues­day… and it’s now almost 2am.

I have about ten mil­lions of things to do, rang­ing from blog main­te­nance to read­ing things, from buy­ing sham­poo to unpack my bags and do the laun­dry. For­tu­nately, I will only start work again next week… and it’s up to me.

Hey, how about a good night sleep now?

Related arti­cles:

1. Wel­come Home…
2. Gone To Beijing!
3. Mon­day In Finland
4. Of a Flight Back Home
5. Above Ground