April 16-18: Finland and Norway – WORK TRAVEL

Plan International flew my manager and me to Helsinki, Finland and Oslo, Norway to visit the National Offices there. Plan is an International Non-Government Organization that raises roughly 70% of its funds from individual sponsors in developed countries in the ‘North’. There are 17 offices in developed countries who recruit and maintain these sponsors and secure corporate grants and other ad hoc donations for specific projects in the field. This money is channeled through headquarters in Woking and then distributed appropriately to the regions and Country Offices where the program work with children is taking place. In order to appropriately evaluate the existing web strategy, or lack thereof, we needed to visit some of the ‘clients’ for the centralized services, i.e. some of the National Offices. Finland and Norway have both been on the central Content Management System (CMS) but are now committed to pulling out and paying for their own service. We wanted to know why and to capture ideas and requirements from them as inputs to the web strategy we will create.

In short, we had loads of meetings.

This didn’t leave too much time for sightseeing, but Monday and Tuesday evenings I saw a bit of Helsinki and ate at a fusion Finnish–Italian–Thai restaurant. Who knew THAT existed?? Our key client contact in the Finland office is 7 months pregnant, so she told us all about the Finnish health system. I was impressed. A pregnant woman gets 1 month off work before she delivers and then 9 months after that for leave. All fully paid. If she wants more, she can take up to two years I believe with decreased pay and a job secured for her. The father gets time off for the child as well, and the couple gets a hospital room with all meals provided overnight completely for free when the big day comes.

Helsinki was a nice town, but it didn’t grab me quite as I was hoping. I wasn’t able to give it proper tourist time, but from walking around the city area in the evenings, I found the majority of buildings to be of modern construction with bright neon signs advertising company names everywhere. The church near the dock was very impressive: it was astonishingly large and bright white with green domes. (I know the pic is bad, none of the buttons on the camera work anymore for some reason, so can't turn the flash off...)

Wednesday morning, April 18, I woke at 4:30 AM, wondering when I was going to get a good night’s sleep again, and we met in the lobby to take a pre-ordered taxi to the airport to fly to Oslo, Norway. Of course, with my bad travel luck, the taxi never showed and after standing in the drizzling rain for 15 minutes trying to hail one as the sun started to rise faintly in the gray overcast background, we called for one and were taken to the airport 35 minutes later than planned. Luckily, the Helsinki airport was very quick and efficient: we were able to check in at a kiosk and walk straight to the desk to drop our bags, then went quickly through security. They actually have a full security staff working at every security booth, what a concept! This kept the flow of traffic steady through the gates and we were in the gate area in no time.

We arrived in Oslo at 8 AM, having taken advantage of the 1 hour we gained (Finland is GMT + 2, Norway is GMT + 1) and realized after waiting in the baggage claim until everyone else from our flight had left, that our bags had been checked through to London Heathrow since we were flying back that evening. Apparently we were just laying over 12 hours in Oslo. Free of our baggage, we took the express train into Oslo and a taxi to the office. Norway, as I learned, is not part of the European Union. They do not use the Euro, and their currency is 6 Krones to $1. This meant my little box of apple juice at the airport cost about $2.80. Yikes. I realize now how I’ve taken the convenience of the Euro for granted. Since we were only in Norway for the day, none of us really wanted to pay the ATM fee to withdraw yet another currency, so we paid for everything with credit card (yes, I paid $2.80 for my juice with a credit card).

Our meetings didn’t start for a few hours, so we walked quickly to the town center towards the parliament and the palace. It was a beautiful area with charming buildings and tree-lined sidewalks. The main street was lined with large flags on either side leading down to the palace. Oh and ‘palace’ was lost in translation: we were told to look for a ‘castle’ and were surprised to find this (building at end of street) representing what we were picturing as stone ruins with a moat. There is still a royal family in Norway, and apparently the crown princess (the wife of the prince) used to be a bit of a party girl and her reputation has followed her to her current position in the tabloids, even though her behavior has changed since then.

At lunch in the free canteen at the office, I tried some Norwegian goat cheese, which has the consistency of provolone and came sliced, but is a strange brown color and tastes totally different. It was sweeter and very tasty.

We had another beautiful sunny day, though considerably colder than Finland had been. Our two days in Finland had also been nice sunny days, with only a little bit of rain for us on our last morning. I am amazed at the luck I’ve been having with the weather in the places I’ve visited.

After an afternoon of meetings, we had a quick deli dinner (which was still $11 for a baguette sandwich and a juice with no table service – ouch) near the harbor and then set off for the airport. At the deli, I noticed to my delight that Doritos sells Cool Ranch flavor in Norway, but calls them ‘Cool American’. I wish I could have fit a bag into my carry-on to bring back with me.

We arrived that night at London Heathrow airport around 10 PM, having been to 3 different countries with 3 difference currencies in one day. I had been to 5 countries in the past week. I was definitely ready to get back to the flat in Woking, particularly since I knew Bryce was waiting for me there, having arrived from visiting his cousin in Madrid that afternoon. :)