Estonia Finland

It starts out with Oliver and me on the train to DIA. Oliver flies Air France through Paris to Helsinki. I'm on Lufthansa, who has warned about travel delays and indeed my flight is delayed by an hour and a half and my connection is an hour and a half so it looks unlikely that I will be able to make it all the way. The plan to meet up in Helsinki is in jeopardy!

The check-in agent ressures me that they'll make up time during the flight. There are a lot of moving parts in that equation.

I sit with Oliver and he gets on board an Air France, A350 to Paris and then Helsinki. He does not have any delays so he'll be going on to Tallin on his own and checking into the hotel solo. I'm not sure where I'll end up.

I'm waiting in the Denver United club with a free pass munching on good food. At the gate I got called on the intercom and upgraded to 29A premium economy. It feels like first class.

We flew over Scotland and the peaks by the sea were covered in snow, it's a great sight and my first of Scotland. I visited the famous downstairs bathroom of the 4 engined Airbus A340 that will go out of service in about a year. I have Wi-Fi on board the flight and communicate with Oliver via text, I'm rebooked on Finnair and I won't make the ferry, he's on his own in a foreign land.

In Frankfurt I get lucky, I line up on what I think is a service counter but it's actually a gate where a rep is helping three people getting re-booked. He turns out to be a chief from the service center and when he hears my story he realizes he can save money by putting me from the Finnair onto a Lufthansa flight to Tallinn directly which turns out to be fairly empty. The landing was a greaser, not even a bump! As a result I arrived at the hotel just a few minutes before Oliver who took a completely different route to Helsinki and a ferry. This turned out to be a very very long day with incredibly long layovers at Denver and Frankfurt. Don't leave your phone charger in the outlet!Läs mer