Going Back

travel 2 Minutes

This time, my trip to Finland was “without extras”: I was traveling without checked luggage, and I didn’t have time for any shopping!

I wanted to get something for my girls from the Moomin Museum, and even this little bit barely fit into my carry-on. The conference closed on Friday at 1 PM, and we were home by 4-30. I immediately started re-packing: I will be back in three weeks, and I realized I could leave some of the things I won’t need at home, but will need when we go to Riga. Now that I am thinking about it, I realize I could leave a lot of warmer clothes there – it’s still summer in Chicago!

I had a business class ticket from Helsinki to London, and an Economy Premium ticket from London to Chicago. However, this one was upgraded to business class at the last moment, allowing me to enjoy a couple of hours of good sleep and very productive working time on both flights and in the lounges. I was really surprised with how much I was able to accomplish on the way back – usually it’s not the case.

I reworked my ADBIS tutorial to fit into a meetup presentation, which I will give at Northwestern next week, and I have started working on my Riga presentation. Additionally, I caught up on most of my non-personal emails and finally published a professional blog post, which I had planned to write for almost a month but never got to.

(There was no way for me to eat everywhere the food was offered on that trip, so I picked the best from each place :))

Helsinki Finnair Lounge
Helsinki- London lunch
A cinacmon bun on that flight: I would never refuse that one 🙂
The Emerald Longe in Heathrow – the above flight was delayed, but there was no security wait, so I had a chance to stop at that one. I do not recall seeing this horse floor lamp before, but I might have forgotten
Ater British Airways upgraded me to the business class, they found my low -calories meal request

(And they forgot to give me coffee before arrival, but that was not a big deal – they were busy serving the First Class :))

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Published by Hettie D.

My name is Henrietta (Hettie) Dombrovskaya. I was born in Saint-Petersburg, Russian (actually, back then – Leningrad, USSR) in 1963, and immigrated to the United States in 1996. I love Saint Petersburg, the city I was born and raised in, and I think it’s one of the most beautiful places in the world. Similarly (but differently) I love Chicago, and can’t imagine myself moving somewhere else in the observable future. I have three children, Igor, Vlad and Anna, all adults living on their own, and one (so far) granddaughter Nadia. I also believe that my children are the best thing that happened in my life. As for my professional life, I am working in the field of Information Technologies. When I was twenty, I’ve declared that the databases are the coolest thing invented and that I want to do them for the rest of my life. Thirty plus years later, I still believe it’s true, and still, believe that the databases are the best. These two statements together imply that I think a person can have it all, and indeed, I think so! Keep reading my journals to find out how I did it.

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