Hello Jet Lag!

....Finally managed to take again time to write my thoughts & experiences, which I have been listing the past months. Happily married now and with some of the free time will try to make sure to empty my thinking tank to my blog :)

Sharing some of the my most vital lessons learned for the flights between continents. If you have additional tips and tricks, please feel to share them. Would be fun to hear what other aids have been figured out.

Moving outside your birth-country is exciting but the name of the game is of course to try to keep all the relationship up and alive also back home. In best case one has also some work commitments there. Which means that there are times that Jet lag is all you know for a while, everything else is covered in a fairy tale like fog :) 

I remember when living in Singapore, I was on a local salary and flying home for Christmas was something I did not dare even dream about. Now I know how good I had it. One year I flew only once to Finland. Well....moving preparations to US brought the cross continent flying to a whole new level:
Before moving to US I had 1 week visit to the client site in Alabama. As I was lucky enough to be able to transfer within the company ....and on top of that take my projects with me.

After that trip I had 2 weeks time to pack the house in Finland and take care of the remaining most crucial wedding preparation tasks, which needed on-site presence.

Then 2 weeks in Texas for Christmas....and after New Year back to Finland for a week to hand over my manager responsibilities and then chirpy-chirp directly to Washington to get the 4 day on-boarding to the US workplace.

Flying across the Atlantic weekly or every 2nd week for 6 weeks in a row meant
"Hello jet lag!".
It gets easier though each time as one learns the tricks which fit the flight duration and circumstances.

I learned that if flying to US with a flight, which leaves Finland in the morning and arrives in US during day time ....stay awake as much as you can. Make sure to have all the magazines and books you wanted to read for months...but never had time. Stay away from heavy food and red wine, as it will make you sleepy.

When flying to Finland with over night flight my tricks are following: I wake up extra early on the day of the flight. This to be extra tired for the flight.

Turku Airport with Moomins to greet you

I stay away from pasta or beef meals, prefer chicken or vegetarian to get something to eat but not eat too heavy. I drink whole lot of water but I also allow myself glass of red wine, when it is time to dose off. Luckily the melatonin tablets have become now easy to get in any store. I have those with me or allergy medication.
My husband, being the chemical engineer of the family, educated me that several allergy medication has ingredients, which make one sleepy . But they do not leave you as badly drowsy as sleeping tablets do.

Thus our favorite has become Benadryl, take two of those and you will be nicely asleep most of the flight (http://www.benadryl.com).
At both ends for the first nights we keep taking melatonin or Benadryl to speed up adjusting to the local time zone. So far it has worked rather well.
Waiting for the time when one can just push a button on the wrist watch and say "Beam me up Scotty!" :)

From the "Airport hell" to "Ticket to 7th heaven"

Changing the home country is never easy, from an emotional roller coaster to roaring and running through airports....it is not far from feeling like you were dumped into the airport hell.
But what if there was an angel that offered you a ticket to 7th heaven, wiping all the previously mentioned away?

Exhausted from the previous day packing the house. Neither sleeping so well due to all the anxiety, excitement and everything in between....at 5 am we packed ourselves and the luggage into the loan car. Unfortunately we had not been able to get flights to same plane. I dropped my fiance off, checked my bags in, took the loan car to the car dealer.

The morning energy package was to meet with one of my best friend, my honeymelone, (she is like a sister to me really) at the airport. Previous evening she had been texting and asking about my departure time. I thought it would be more for curiosity but never thought she would be keen to come to the airport early in the morning. But I guess that makes best friends to be the best friends...they do things, which seem crazy for others :o) (Well my 3 best friends....they are really wonderful crazy bunch. But I come back to that some day later)

But in all seriousness....How many of you would drive in cold and dark weather at 7 am to the airport to have coffee with someone before going to work? Nope, not seeing to many hands up there in the crowd.

It was the best morning tea/coffee I have had for a while. We babbled on with everything between earth and sky, with the energy and happiness which one would have at a after work meet up :o)
Even the "tear control" process was in place when saying good-bye to each other (I lost the control later but she was not there to see it). It felt so nice to walk through the gate after such a nice "bon voyage" morning session.

Like said, that was the high point of my morning....as from there on things seemed to just get crazier by the minute for next hours. At the gate, when it got closer to boarding time, announcement was made to inform that the SAS flight crew was had not yet arrived. Some of us, mainly Finnish passangers, were joking that the Swedes had gone to celebrate pikkujoulut (little Christmas party) night before. (Those not familiar with the pikkujoulu traditions see HERE)

But our joking stopped pretty fast when they informed little later that the crew will not make it in time for most of us to be able to make it to our connection flights. At that point the verbal statements around me changed to the traditional Finns disliking Swedes expressions:"Those Swedes cannot even get one flight to take off in time. Should let the Finns handle it, there would be less talk and no problems..." (It is a never ending love-hate relationship that exists between Finns and Swedes and it goes both ways)
Luckily they made the full announcement in Finnish first, which gave us Finns the head start to take over the service desk with the request to reroute. After all it was just 4 days till Christmas Eve and any day lost in transit was tagged with a personal price tag, loosing quality time with family.

I got lucky and was rerouted to Lufthansa flight, via Fankfurt to Washington and there on to my new home.As the airlines do not cooperate with each other, I got the privilege to pick-up my luggage and check it in again at Lufthansa counter. All this took me an hour and lot of running around.

When I had done that, sat down to take a breath...I realized that the whole rerouting meant arriving in the middle of the night without keys and forcing my fiance to wake up, who had arrived just 6 hours prior to that.
It made me sad to think that my fiance had just flown the same route some hours earlier and was heading straight from Frankfurt to Houston. I would be traveling alone the same route....hours later.

I called him (well in time before he was due to get on board of his flight from Frankfurt) to share the news and humbly giving the heads up for the need to have him to open the door for me in the middle of the night....
He was so good about it and promised to come to pick me up even from the airport and check my flight situation to see if there were any delays.

I thought to myself....I am surrounded with the best craziest people. First my best friend coming in the crack of dawn to see me off and now my fiance willing to come pick me up from the airport in the middle of the night (after he has just gotten settled in home after 18h travel and with 8 hours time difference).

The flight to Frankfurt arrived in such a tight time that I ran through the airport...the last thing I wanted to do was to miss the connection flight. I managed while running grab a bottle of my fiance's favorite chocolate liquor (Mozart dark), which I had not seen in US. I negotiated in the Russian style to jump the queue before a huge Chinese tourist group. I made sure to make an innocent face and explain that my flight is taking off in few minutes. It all worked well and they were happy to let me go first (or just really confused what I was trying to explain and too happy with all the piles of cigarettes and perfume bottles they had in their arms).

I raced to the gate and went obediently to the mandatory security check and to give my address in US, during which they reprinted the tickets for the remaining journey.
I browsed through the ticket and was sure that they had made a mistake. My seat had changed and boarding group zone too. I asked the lady kindly, whether she was sure that this was my ticket.
I mean name was right on the ticket...but nothing else matched to the ticket they had printed already in Helsinki. I was tired and confused...I was sure there was a huge mistake and then in the plane I would be bounced around, as they had given me accidentally someone's business class seat....until it stroke me that this must have been my fiance's way to say "I wish you a pleasant flight and I wish I was there with you"!! :o)
Could it be?! Would he have gone and done that...for me?! He is crazy!! ...and adorable at the same!

I was shocked, happy and not far from being high from the mind game or my fiance upgrading me to the business class. I walked tunnel that stated "Business Class" and I screamed on the way: Jipppiiiii!!!! (I did not care if someone was behind me and asked the stewards later to give me some mental medication)
I had 2 elder gentlemen sitting next to me. While I was settling in and packing my bags away I told them my conclusions to the business class upgrade and what a wonderful fiance I have. They were very happy for me. I sat down to read the inflight magazine and was hoping that my fiance would feel the warmth, somewhere over the Atlantic, from all the love I was trying to send him mentally.

The inflight magazine looked interesting, especially all the gadgets they had selected for the tax free shopping. I always take some home just to check the latest gadget trends...I love gadgets. I heard a familiar voice asking:" Miss, is this seat free?" I looked up to see if the ticket they gave me at the gate was really the ticket straight to 7th heaven and maybe I was there already... as it was my FIANCE! He was standing there, right there. I jumped up and just wanted to kiss him head to toe and hug him so hard.

As all the excitement calmed down, the elder gentleman sitting on my other side commented: This is definitely something to tell at home to my wife....well not everything though, as otherwise she will start having too high expectations. But this is like straight from a reality show with such a happy ending!"

I kept staring with an idiotic smile at my fiance the first hour. I could not believe that he was really there...with me, flying with me... making the entry to our new life in US together. While holding my eyes closed, I kept reaching my hand out to reach his hand...wanted to make sure that even though my eyes were closed...that he would stay there, right next to me...my angel.

And yes.....he had sooooo deserved his Mozart chocolate liquor :o)