I had a most interesting weekend. Brace yourselves, this will be a loong one. As some of you may know, I play a mobile altered reality game called Ingress (more details here). Several times a year there are anomaly events, where a bunch of players for meach side (I am resitance/blue) gather in one of several cities and battle for control of a ell or a stated portal for ten minutes at the top of an hour, four times. At some point in the hour the controllers of Ingress (a google subsidiary) will take a measurement and then score the battle. The length of measureent or precise time isnt given, just what portals are being scored and the ten minute period during some of which the scoring will take place. On July 3rd there was such an anomaly announced in Dublin, with stallitte events in Tallin, Estonia and one other place whose name I cannot recall at the minute. Due to lateness of the announcement and my own poor student hood, I could not afford to fly to Dublin but managed to put together a very reasonably price bus/ferry/hostel package for tallin, then spent three very intensive weeks in the incredibly hot finnihs sun farming i.e. haking portals so I could meet the equipment requirements for my assignmed role. This involved, in essence, walking aorund outside for about 45 minutes, 3 times a day, although expiditions further afiled some times saw me in the sun for up to two hours at a time. Either way I was ready, ferry booked, tickets checked, up at 5:15 AM on saturday, Juy 26th to get a bus the two hours to Helsinki and walk o the port for my Viking line ferry. I arrived in Helsinki (thank you Onnibus) and discovered, as I was going to join the queue... I had forgotten my passport :? :cry: :shock: :shock: I do have a finnish ID card but it says on the back (in three languages no less) This is not a travel docuent. I admit I panicked. I had wored very hard for three weeks to prepare for this event. Had it been in say, Sweden I would have been in Turku port and feasibly could have gotten a cab back to y apartment to collect it, but Helsinki port is an hour and 3/4 away fomr my home at best speed, it was 9 AM and the boat left at ten. A very kind young (late 20s) Finnish couple found me and calmed me down, The Viking line check in lady said I could risk travelling without y passport as she could accept my card as a form of ID to prove who I was for check in purposes but if the customs officialls in Estonia stopped me the fines could run to hundreds of Euro. I decided to risk it and with the encouragement of the couple I had met, got on the boat. They took mem down to the cabin they had gotten and let me sit on their bed and calmed me down, giving me water and generally looking after this poor, deeply stressed Irishman. The walk off the ferry along assorted ramps and stairs was one of the longest I have ever done, every tie the crowd slowed in front of us I figured the jig was u, but as we went down the final few flights of stairs to the terminal entrance, I walked, with trembling legs, on to estonian soil. I had made it! Once there I focused on what I had come to do, the young women in the hostel (kate teens early twenties) were extrodinarily helpful and taxis in Tallin are cheaper than any european city I have been in, pssibly excepting Lison in the early 00s. Heaing back to Finland on the 7 AM ferry the following morning I experinced a similair thing, same warning from the check in girl on the estonian side you are travelling at your own risk, you oculd incur fines of hunreds of euro etc etc But I figured if they did stop me I could always claim I had lost my passport in Tallin and the embassey didnt have working staff on a Sunday in July. But again, a (much shorter, picked the right deck to disembark form this time) walk had me on Finnish soil I could have KISSSED the ground :mrgreen: :sunny: :sunny: :bounce: . So a somewhat sleep deprived but extremely relieved phaze got back to turku aroun 13:00 yesterday, Lesson duly learned, but boy! what an adventure.
Posted on: Mon, 28 Jul 2014 20:55:15 +0000