I'm Back

It appears Finnair is one of the few airlines still serving food on a short haul flight. I’m unbelievably thirsty as I haven’t drank anything except a bit of shower water while brushing my teeth and that was ages ago. I watch the drink cart as I receive my sandwich package. To be honest, I was hoping they would only serve a snack, maybe those little pretzels or the always pleasant “trail mix” type. Anyway, back to getting that drink, it looks like they have Lime Juice. Maybe it’s a local specialty, maybe it is lemonade, either way, it sounds refreshing. “Is that lime juice?’” I ask the flight attendant. It’s grapefruit juice. I take it anyway, it was refreshing. Now, let’s have a look at this sandwich. Without opening the blue and white plastic bag, I can see cheese peeking out from a multigrain roll and undoubtedly there’s a thick layer of butter on the roll. Too my disappointment, I was correct about the butter and in addition, there’s some type of unidentified meat on my sandwich accompanied by a shriveled piece of lettuce. I feel compelled to make this sandwich edible and consume it. My first instinct, a roll with butter sounds good, I’ll just discretely remove the meat, cheese and lettuce and quickly reassemble my now empty sandwich. That did not work at all. The cheese took all the butter so I put it back but I didn’t like it so I removed it again, first using it as a knife to spread the butter back onto the bread. Could that meat be roast beet? No I don’t think so. Well I had two open faced butter sandwiched. Airline lunches are always the same, so predictably bad but yet, I feel obligated to at least try to eat the sandwich once it is placed in front of me. Ultimately, the sandwich is always so boring. I should mention the passengers on this plane look anything but boring. In fact the woman sitting next to me is a bit odd. Either it is her first ever flight or she is overly excited about nothing. She took several photographs at the airport with a (gasp!) film camera, I thought my mother was the only person left using one of those aside from serious photographers. Red, in honor of her terrible dye job, only peeled her face off the window to ask for a vegetarian sandwich. Apparently she forgot she was a vegetarian at check-in because she didn’t order one and was thus denied. Apparently she is also not a strict vegetarian as she simply removed the meat and ate the whole sandwich. Even with her neck to toe black outfit and terribly bright red hair, she is one of the more tame looking passengers on this flight. I’m really not sure what to expect in Helsinki but on this plane alone you will find a man who looks like a woman and is wearing Cons, gold jeans, a white blouse complete with ruffles around the cuffs, several necklaces ranging from a sequin scarf to plastic beads to silver charms, eye make up and a white hat Britney Spears couldn’t even pull off back when she was dating Justin. His hair is bleached out and just below shoulder length. His traveling companion also has long hair, brown and frizzy but his outfit is much more demure consisting of a black leather jacket and black shirt and pants. As I watched passengers board, I was seaded in row 4 and rows 10 – 21 were asked to board first, this was not the only oddity. Next came a gang of chubby German gangsters, complete with their blonde locks, baggy jeans and oversized hoodies, 4 boys and a girl wearing a similar outfit with a much smaller, formfitting hoodie and accessorized with a rhinestone belt clearly proclaiming her name, sadly I forgot her name but yesterday I saw an identical belt on a woman named Pia. They were actually denied boarding but for no reason other than they were not sitting in rows 10 – 21. Next up a group of Spanish speaking woman with identical carry on bags. I know they speak Spanish because I was stuck behind their confused babble in the line to check my bags and the 5 of them could not seem to agree on where they needed to be. Directly behind this group was a much calmer, sedated by comparison, group of Japanese tourists. They were middle aged, traveling together in a group of about 8 and they all looked like tourists. There’s just something about Japanese tourists that makes them stand out in a crowd and the older ones love Europe. I will say the twenty somethings are much more fashionable and would stand out for different reasons but you tend to find this crowd at outlets and in America in greater numbers than Europe. Moving on, just when I thought we were done with freaks, 3 guys walk up and I really have no words for their outfits. I will describe the one who was the most eclectic and you will just have to use you imagination on his companions. Picture, 6 feet 2 inches, long hair, black and white all over printed shirt, leather cropped vest with tassels over this, tight black pants, grey and black printed suspenders hanging down which were clearly meant to be worn like this as are on inside out. To top it all off, he is carrying in his arms what appears to be a long red pleather trench coat. You’ll just have to imagine how his friends were dressed. Either there’s some sort of music festival going on in Helsinki or it just attracts the characters. I realize I was ready to put this blog to bed, not because it was time but because I was momentarily uninspired. Welcome back blog! In celebration of the return of my, briefly, halted blog, I will entertain renaming. I’m leaning to Adventures in Liederhosen Land but have not yet committeed so please send along any suggestions!