The surprise trip!

I was browsing through my hard drive last night and stumbled upon some interesting stories. One of them is a brief story of my last april's fool when still living in Lyon:

It’s just a normal everyday Monday when I’m sitting in my home in Lyon, staring at my laptop, trying to get inspired without any superb result. The plan was to shred on snow for a week one more time before the end of the season. But alas, what happened? After a quick review on my glorious economic situation I had to flush the plan down the toilet. This wasn’t a problem to plan another trip; a trip home to Finland. A trip no one would know anything about, except me and some carefully picked out persons. Internet is such a wonderful thing, a couple of clicks and a small research later I was ready to leave the 31.3.2010 to Helsinki-Vantaa airport. This is going to be one hell of an April’s fool.

2½ weeks later I am sitting in a cozy car on a TGV train towards Paris. I’m going to climb on a Finnair plane in Paris and there’s only 1½h time to change. 30 minutes of that changing time disappeared instantly in Lyon because of the retarded functionality of SNCF, the French train monopoly. A friend, Bibi from Cape Verde, Africa once told me “No stress” to about any “not-so-nice” situation we ended up in and it struck me that instance, it’s true. If you’re in a situation that you can’t affect, don’t even try, just let it go with its own weight. That’s the wisdom I’m going to live by today. When I finally got my bags to the check-in in Paris, the nice lady told me that boarding starts in 5 minutes, you’re right on time. I gave a thumbs up to Bibi in my thoughts. Something that didn’t strike me by surprise was the fact that the plane is also 30 minutes late. Typical French. “Luckily here are people from Finland that I can talk with”, I thought and sat next to a Finnish-Swede from Ostrobothnia in the waiting lobby just to find out that he doesn’t understand my Swedish, and thinks I’m talking French to him so I decide to join the Finnish force and simply shut up and mind my own business. The flight went without problems and the landing time was unbelievably on time despite the 30 minute delay in Paris. Arriving at 23:00 the trip took 6 hours from Lyon to Helsinki. That’s as long as the trip from Lyon to Briancon. C’est vraiment incroyable! One of the handpicked persons I decided to tell about my trip was Pille who was going to both pick me up from the airport and offer me a couch to crash on for the night and boy was I happy when I saw him. The agenda of the night: home to his place, Finnish beer (where’s the sauna?), talk bullshit and to bed. It’s going to be a big day tomorrow. The one that I’ve waited for like a 10 year-old waits for Christmas Eve.

Pille has invited Dick and Jenny for a little pre-game at his place at about 20.30 so I have the whole day to see other people in town. I’m going to surprise Mum at her workplace but apparently she has a day off. What a pity. Next stop: Arcada. Maybe someone is there. Rick is there! He thinks it’s a bad joke that I’m in school and doesn’t believe what he sees until he hugs me. He made up a bad excuse of having broken his leg. What a tasteless April’s fool. Mine worked better. We decided to grab some beers and walk around town until it was time to get to Pille’s place. How are they going to react? What are they going to say? Those are the topics we were thinking and imagining the whole day. A bit late as always Dick and Jenny arrive to the other side of the door. I hide behind the table with two different brands of beers in my hands; Karjala and Lapin Kulta. Rick opens the door because Pille is still at work. Dick was genuinely surprised by seeing Rick, not an everyday sight in this apartment. “What the F**k are you doing here??” is the exact translation that Dick got out of his mouth to Rick. After a small chit chat moment with Rick the “wtf” factor had laid down. Little did he know what he was going to see. When I appear from behind the table with the question “Karjala or Lapin Kulta” his smile disappears and every bit of intelligence in his face flies away to Bangkok. He is speechless. A stupid smile is the only beauty he can produce. He’s in shock, a good one, I can tell it. Jenny opens her mouth to a staggering “What are YOU doing here?” but Dick is without words. Not until I ask once more the rational and easy question “Well? Karjala or Lapin Kulta” he manages to say “Lapin Kulta, of course”. He’s almost bewildered, and doesn’t really know what to do, except give me a bottle opener and be happy to see me, I’m never going to forget his facial expression: “blank, reboot, enter password, restore from fatal error, what the hell just happened” –expression. Priceless!

I have to come up with something better next year. Now I'll get back to ginger bread and candy making! Arrivederci.