Here at you is Part 3 of “Emma leaves Finland and Blogs for the duration of her Travels home.” The following posts were written during my 28+ hour journey from Helsinki to Vancouver and are both a real-time chronicle of my jet-lagged mind, and a recap on the last few weeks in Helsinki. I’ve broken it up into (fairly) manageable parts and will be posting throughout the week. Enjoy!

10:21am, Munich Time; MUC (005 hours blogging)

Hello sweet German soil, my fatherland (uhm, I mean that literally…). Thank you for welcoming me to your shores with freezing rain, angry businessmen and stale pretzels. Now, where’s the power outlet? I have 2 hours to kill…

The flight ended uneventfully except for eine kleine shlaufen. My seat mate was a rather outspoken Finnish businessman (outspoken in that he spoke to me) who works for Nokia communications and has flown to Munich ten times already this year. It isn’t a very long flight, indeed comparable to the daily commute of some, but as much as I love travelling, I would hate to fly that much. Especially the security lines. On my way in through customs the polezei lady didn’t seem to know what to make of my Finnish visa, but I just said “No. Its over now.” Twist the knife.

Making it safely to my gate I found a vendor and purchased provisions. Namely, Haribo gummibears. I got a little bag for me and a regular-sized one for my dad. I know he’ll look at it scrunch his brow with a short laugh and say “Pft! What is this?” to which I will reply “Gummi bears from GERMANY!” Such sentimentality could very well be lost. We’ll see.

Speaking of sentimentality, I also stopped at the little coffee shop and bought a pretzel with warm memories of fresh, soft, salty twists of goodness we used to get for breakfast when we visited Oma. Not surprisingly, I was very disappointed. Can we blame airport food?

But if an airport puts such effort into its Smoking Zones, shouldn’t it put some effort into its pretzels? Yes indeed, though I have seen a fair number of airports in my life, I have not seen a smoking area such as here in the Munich Airport. First of all, its not just any smoking zone, it’s a Camel Smoking Zone, which somehow makes it more exotic (coughOrientalismcough- What? No, I haven’t been smoking!). In this very posh, walnut- and-white showcase smack in the middle of everything are these booths where people can smoke. It also looks like there are waitresses, serving. Is this just a German thing? Or new in general?

By the way, in a desparate grab for power (my powerbar was down to only 16%!) I am now sitting left-of-centre, but still basically in the middle of it all, on the floor, getting as much juice as I can. I will try to write as much as I can for the moment and then leave my computer to recharge in peace.

Anyway, the smoke booths got me thinking about airports and how I find they are indicative of the cities where they are placed. Houston, Texas is vast, fully equipped and overwhelming; Seattle is simple, understated, with a couple really good art installations. Osaka is clean to the point of sterility and quietly uniform; Bangkok is over-the-top majestic. Helsinki is tiny, clean, extremely consciencous of the user (beer at 5 am, automatic roll down blinds to sheild the blinding early sun). And Vancouver? Vanouver is glass and metal and wood and First Nations’ art. I guess, designed for first impressions?

Oph- Time to board. Helloooo trans-Atlantic Flight. Hellooo Canada!

How will Emma survive the 10 hour flight? And will Canada take her back? Find out in the final installment of FINNale, June 6th!