I’m there, on the other side of the counter desk listening to a beautiful dutch woman saying to me that my reservation from Helsinki to Amsterdam to San Francisco had been cancelled.

There are two types of people: the one that will freak out knowing the situation previously told, and the other one who will get excited because of not knowing what could happen.

I’m the second one.

I must admit that I was scared for a few minutes after the lady told me in others words that I had to buy a new ticket. (The reason why my reservation was cancelled is not important in this story.)

Those minutes were really painful. But after that, everything started to be nice in my mind. I tackled this situation considering it as an adventure. What would be the worst thing that could happen to me? Being deported? Nice! A great story to tell to my grand-children.

I didn’t put much effort trying to solve this situation. I just wanted to live an incredible adventure full of surprises of course.

First thing to do: Solve the problem with the airline

Something I certainly knew was that I must make it to San Francisco because in 3 days I had to present my thesis at Stanford, otherwise I would lose an entire year of hard work. So I decided to talk with the authorities of the airline to find a solution to my situation. The only solution they gave me was to buy a new ticket, that meant spend around one thousand euros that I didn’t have. No way! Thinking harder, I contacted the KLM (this was the airline) twitter account, and through direct messages and telling my sad story of a foreign student with no money in his pocket, we adressed a fine solution for both parties: 200 euros of penalty to get my tickets back to California. First thing solved.

Second: Find a place to sleep

Now that I had gotten my tickets, the problem was that my flight would be leaving the next day. What should I do? Find a hotel? Go back to Aalto’s campus (where I stayed in Finland)? Sleep in the airport?

This is me wearing a camo jacket and carrying a giant bag while walking from coast to coast by the helsinki airport. This airport is not that big, so I began to look familiar to the employees of the airport, a kind of Tom Hanks-The Terminal situation.

Always thinking this was an adventure, I decided to sleep in the airport. One pro: the internet was super fast and free. One con: it was freezing as fuck even though it was june.

This is me again, sat in the dining room of Alepa (supermarket everywhere in Finland) watching a football match of the Copa Libertadores de América on my computer. I had to figure it out how to make the time pass faster. 2 hours watching a football match, 3 hours trying to understand this weird piece of art next to me.

And so on, I tried to spend time doing different activities to manage my 24-hour stay.

Probably this doesn’t seem as an adventure to you, I mean: watching football while sitting in a lonely airport doesn’t sound fun. But for me it was.

The best way to end this story is telling you that I missed my flight again, but this time I had a 24-hour stay in Paris, France.

Disclaimer: I’m not a native english speaker. Every correction is very welcome.