#45 - Tampere - Oulu VIP

Oulu is a nice city to visit every now and then. I have some experience about that, because I used to fly frequently to Oulu earlier this millennium. You do not have to worry about the ice bears and reindeers at the Rotuaari walking street ;-)

The tricky point was the travelling between Tampere and Oulu, because the direct flight was stopped when I started to travel there. Waking up before 5 am at home and flying from Tampere to Oulu via Helsinki. I was often among the first ones to arrive the office. I was also among the last ones to leave the office in order to get back to home after 10 pm. Once or twice a week for couple of years and it became almost a routine. Colleagues were skilled, friendly and we really drove change.

After all those years, the reward was Finnair Plus gold card. What more could you expect after all the commitment. During one of the trips I got an unexpected bonus, i.e. one night at the hotel room that had a private sauna (that has not happened ever again in my career). Unfortunately in all that excitement I did not realize to invite all the friends to a sauna party. Like a typical Finn, I enjoyed it all alone.

Lessons learnt:

If you work hard, all the effort will be rewarded (sooner or later).

#44 - Scary family

Due to my carefree attitude on preparation of business travel, I have suffered quite much stress while on the road. After all the experiences I still have an opinion that is clearly better not to worry every time before the business trip and save your thoughts to core business.

Unfortunately it seems that I have unintentionally copied the same attitude also to travelling in pleasure. This has given some hard time to my family, as well. Let me give you one example.

Couple of years ago we spent a relaxing family vacation in La Mange at the Costa Blanca, Spain. After enjoying two weeks of sunny weather, sweaty jogging, sound of waves, relaxing books, cool pool, warm evenings, tasty dinners and ice creams, we were ready to return back to home. Wake up call three at o’clock at night, quick breakfast, packing suitcases to our rental car and we were ready to go. It was dark outside. We were running on schedule, flight was departing around 7 o’clock from Alicante to Tampere.

Soon after hitting the road, the rental car gave an unfamiliar sound signal. We were running out of fuel very soon. We had bypassed the previous service station some kilometers ago. I started to look at the next fuel station with my mobile phone. Nothing at the proximity. The computer was showing range of 20 kilometers. It was still dark and no other cars or people on the road. We bypassed one village at a time, but none of those had a gasoline station. Everyone in the car had some stress already. If we would not find a fuel station in couple of kilometres, we would lose our flight. The computer was showing range of 10 kilometers when I remembered that the next village was the one where me and my wife spent our vacation two decades ago and I thought there must be a gasoline station that is open all night. My navigator indicated two gasoline stations at the village. We found out that the first one was not operational anymore. Tension was growing all the time. We had one more chance. The gasoline station had lights on, but no self-service with credit cards. Is there any service person inside? Yes, what a relief. We filled the tank and drove happily to the airport. Finally everything went well and there are only happy memories left about the vacation.

Lessons learnt:

The business processes does not always fit for private life.

#43 - Wrong exit

Some time ago I got an inspiration of learning new by interacting with a group of innovation experts. That was a good reason for a visit to Bonn Germany. I had a clear travel plan; flight from Helsinki to Frankfurt and train from the airport to Bonn. However, the plan was not enough. I was queuing next to a ticket automat in order to buy train ticket to Bonn. The operation of the machine seemed complicated. I followed the actions of the previous persons buying their tickets and learned how to buy tickets to Colon. When it was my turn, I managed to do exactly the same; i.e. buy a single ticket to Colon. Next I was sitting on a train. After a while the train arrived happily at Colon and hurried out of the train. After my first step outside the train, I realized that this is not the place where I should be. I should be in Bonn. I did not know where the train was continuing and I did not remember the location of Colon compared to Bonn. The train departed before I could even open the Internet access on my smart phone. There I was at the railway station of Colon. After checking the price, I jumped into a taxi. With such a speeding I was very quickly in Bonn and the harm was mainly mental.

Lessons learnt:

Plan is not enough, proper execution completes the targeted results.

Copy with pride is a good principle, but does not suit all the situations.

Dusseldorf-Cologne-Bonn