It's Friday night in Oulu, and I am so very tired...

It's been a long and busy week. Satomi, Julian and I returned from Japan on Monday (left Tokyo Narita at around 6:00 PM, and arrived in Seattle at around 10:00 AM the same day). Satomi and Julian took naps when we got home, but I had lots of catching up to do and didn't sleep until the evening (after adding 17 hours to the day).

I had one reasonably good night of sleep at home, then on Tuesday evening (after a half day in the office) I flew to San Jose to attend meetings scheduled for Wednesday morning. The meetings were early and I was jetlagged so I couldn't get much sleep on Tuesday night.

On Wednesday afternoon I flew with Bob Plunkett to Europe. The routing took us first to London, then to Helsinki and finally to Oulu in northern Finland. (This west-to-east travel meant another insanely long day -- I missed a night of sleep or added 14 hours to the day, depending on your perspective, and the total travel time from the office to the hotel in Oulu was close to 22 hours.)

In Helsinki, where we were supposed to clear customs, we found that British Airways had temporily lost our bags (missed the connection) so we were faced with the possibility of showing up for our customer presentations wearing the same clothes we had already been wearing for two days (fortunately the bags were delivered to the hotel in Oulu early the next morning).

I had some four hours of sleep before jetlag again woke me up. I watched CNN and some English-language European news stations until it was time for breakfast, then went with the others (Plunkett and I had been joined by that time by two others) to Nokia for our day-long meeting.

So what's Oulu like? Given how little time I've had to explore I don't really know. But my first impression is that it's cold and dark. We're about 100 miles south of the Arctic Circle here so the sun doesn't even make it above the treetops at noon. Sunrise to sunset is just over three hours total. (Dawn and twilight linger, however, so the day doesn't seem quite as short as it really is.)

Oulu also seems rather small and provincial. There's very little here -- not many old buildings, not much of a downtown core -- and what there is seems a little grubby. We took a walk after dinner and covered the whole downtown in about one hour, including a few detours indoors to get warm (the temperature is well below freezing). But what Oulu has is high-tech industry. Nokia is here, as are other related technology companies. Finland has three cellphones for every four inhabitants and is a powerhouse in mobile communications.

Finland is a flat, glacier-scraped country (think "Minnesota") with large stands of scraggly birch trees. (At least I think they're birch.) The language is inscrutable, with lots of vowel sounds. "Breakast" is "Aamiainen", according to that sign over there... And speaking of breakfast, judging from the buffet this morning Finland also had good food, particularly the breads. Just like in Germany, I could eat myself fat here. Yum.

The next morning, after another buffet breakfast and an early walk around Oulu (not much new to see, but it was worth a try) I took a taxi to the airport to catch a flight to Helsinki. I had originally been scheduled to fly back to Seattle on Saturday, but had decided the day before starting the trip to stay in Finland for an extra day. So I had tickets to fly back on Sunday. But finding Oulu less than interesting (it seems to be one of those awkward-sized cities that are too small to have a vibrant downtown core, but big enough to have sprouted bland suburbs, "big box" malls and ugly industrial parks) I decided instead to fly to Helsinki, the first leg of my return trip, and spend Saturday night there.

At the airport I changed the ticket (no problem) and went through the security check to get to the gate. Oulu has a small airport; there were no lines at the X-ray and nobody ever asked for my ID (unlike at Seattle or San Jose, where you now have to show your ID three or four times before getting on the plane). After going through security I found a chair near the windows. As I sat down, I looked outside and noticed that the sun was slowly coming up in a spectacular red-orange display, directly in front of the nose of the Finnair MD-82 that was sitting on the tarmac. (It was 10:30AM, by the way -- and the sun would be going down again in less than four hours.)

It looked like a great picture so I opened my computer bag to get the camera, hoping I could pause and take a picture while walking out to the airplane (there was no jetway). But when I unzipped the bag I got a surprise: a noseful of acrid smoke. I pulled the camera out of its case and saw that there was gray smoke coming out of the battery compartment. I unsnapped the cover (which was quite hot) and dumped the four rechargable batteries into the case, hoping they weren't about to blow up or something (I wondered if the X-ray machine had fried them somehow). Examining the camera I found that there was some kind of metal spring (or perhaps a fried resistor) creating a short circuit between the two metal plates that contact the batteries on the underside of the battery cover. There was no time to investigate further (it was time to board) so I put the camera back in the bag, figuring it was dead.

The flight to Helsinki was nice -- about one hour of flying over scattered clouds, with a good view of the thousands of lakes that spread across Finland (like I said, think Minnesota -- no wonder so many Scandanavians emigrated to the Midwest). At the Helsinki airport I waited for my suitcase to appear and looked again at the camera. It appeared to me that the thing that had caused the short (resulting in a gob of melted plastic that I had to scrape away to get a better look) was a small spring related to the battery cover latch. I used a car key to pry the spring out (it now looked like a tiny mangled Slinky) and tossed it in a trash can. The battery cover still closed properly (even though the latch didn't spring to a closed position like it was supposed to, friction seemed to do the job) so I put in the batteries and gave it a try. Hooray, the camera still worked and there was still a charge in the batteries.

But geez, what a dumb design! Why would you put a metal spring like that (a constantly flexing metal part that must eventually fail) right next to the battery terminals? I suppose my whole computer bag could have gone up in smoke if I hadn't opened it and noticed the smell.

After checking into the Radisson Plaza hotel in downtown Helsinki I went for a walk through the city. The sun was low, already on its way down as I meandered through the streets looking for interesting districts. There were a few areas with older buildings and cobbled streets, and a few big churches. Perhaps it's the season, but for the most part Helsinki lacked charm in the light of day; I had trouble liking it. The streets were littered, the buildings a bit grimy and, it being winter, the trees were bare. But as the sunlight dimmed and the streetlights took over it got more interesting, and much prettier.

I found a larger department store, Stockmann, and bought a cheap wool sweater for me (I was getting cold) and a toy car for Julian. In the park that forms the center of the Etelaesplanadi boulevard there was a large street market set up, and I joined a tighly packed crowd of people moving from stall to stall, looking at table after table of nordic crafts, colorful pottery and other bric-a-brac. Street musicians played Christmas tunes on accordions and tubas, old men and costumed children solicited money (for what I don't know) and after about ten minutes I'd had enough of it.

As I made my way out from the throng, however, I saw a pair of blacksmiths pounding hot metal on an anvil and stopped to see what they were making. The heat from their fire was pleasant (if smoky) so I lingered for a while. At some point I noticed a little handcrafted axe sitting on the table. The price was reasonable (cheap, actually) so after one of the blacksmiths was done I called him over and paid for it. He put a leather cover over the axe head and gave it to me. "Better put that under your clothes," he warned. "The police might take it away if they see it."

Happy with my treasure, I went back to the hotel room and put it into my suitcase, called home and talked to Satomi, then went back out to find something to eat. I had noticed a sushi place just down the street from the hotel so I went in and gave it a try. Ughh... The rice was dry and the fish was chewy. Oh well, I should have known better. While eating the sushi I was reading a small English-language entertainment guide and I noticed that the Japanese Taiko ensemble Kodo was playing in town. Kodo was in Seattle last year but we were in Australia at the time. I wanted to see it, so I hurried back to the hotel and asked someone at the front desk how to buy tickets. I was directed back to the department store where I'd bought the sweater, went up to the sixth floor and took a number at the "Lippupalvelu" ticket agency. There were almost twenty people ahead of me and the numbers were not moving very fast. While I sat and waited I overheard a customer at the counter say, in English, "...Japanese drum..." and then "Sold out?" I got up and chased him as he was leaving. Stuart (a Brit working temporarily in Helsinki) suggested we try the box office at the theater, which was nearby. We walked over there together, but no luck. The closest I could get to Kodo was to walk around their large equipment truck, which was parked up on the sidewalk in front of the theater.

After walking around a bit more I found a small pub and stopped in for a beer. While I sat there sipping my Christmas ale (which was very tasty) and getting infused with cigarette smoke I watched a man in a suit and overcoat make a valiant effort to finish one more drink before falling over. The guy was really toasted, but somehow he managed to pay his bill and perambulate out the door without crashing into anyone. A few minutes later I left as well. I wasn't in the same state but I was very tired (jetlag again) so I went back to the hotel and turned on the TV. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was on (in English, with Finnish subtitles). I fell asleep halfway through, then woke up again at around eleven, just in time for the big gun battle at the end. I was feeling hungry.

Helsinki at midnight on a Saturday: why not? I put my coat back on and headed out into the noisy, swirling crowds. There were long lines at the bars, and loud techno music was blaring from speakers that had been hung outside above the doors. The restaurants were also full, so after wandering around for thirty minutes I gave up and had a slab of pizza from a takeout place. (It was that or a hot dog from a cart. Or pub food and more smoke...)

The people-watching was interesting for a while. It was easy to spot the Estonian and Russian prostitutes: they seemed to travel in packs of three, and occasionally I would see a group of them slumped over the tables of fast food places like McDonalds. In the bright light of the hamburger joints they looked older than their likely ages, and tired. But I'd seen all this before in other cities; I didn't stay long and got back to the hotel before one o'clock.