The Quest for Santa

As most of my faithful readers now know, I’m currently in Helsinki, Finland with work. So far, I haven’t really seen much of this city, although walking around it was really awesome to see the old style buildings and narrow walkways. Someone asked me what the buildings were like, and I stopped myself before saying “they look European” since I guess that’s obvious.

Yesterday someone flew down from a little town called Oulu to hang out with me for the day and work on some stuff. One of the things that we discussed was me going up there for a few days, since there are more people up there that understand what we’re working on. So today, I have to get on another plane and travel even further North and spend a few days in Oulu. In fact, I’ll just be a stones throw away from the Arctic Circle.

Right now I’m scheduled to fly back to Helsinki on Friday and possibly spend the weekend here. My return flight to Vancouver is on Wednesday, so whatever happens I need to be in Helsinki by Tuesday so I can wake up and start the long journey home.

I’m not sure which is further north, Dawson City, YT, or Oulu, Finland, but after today I will have spent time in both and will probably have seen the Northern Lights from two very different locations. I’m anxiously awaiting the opportunity to take my camera out and snap some photos. So far I’ve been holed up in my hotel most of the time.

I’ll drop another entry probably tonight or tomorrow once I’m all settled up in Oulu.

Also, I’ve been playing around with a website called TripTracker.com. It’s a neat idea, where it will basically import all your flickr photos and help you build a trip out of it. I started one for this trip, so take a look and keep track of it — apparently there’s an RSS feed for it too.