Saturday? Sunday? 18 Jul

Saturday morning Deb and Niklaas delivered me to the Pullman-Moscow International Airport about 6:00. It was a whirl-wind week in Moscow, with 4 separate meetings in 3 days, a Rendevous in the Park concert, and errands. I had about a 4 hour lay-over in Seattle. My flight to Amsterdam was uneventful and I enjoyed every minute of being in business class. I used up a lot of frequent flier miles to ensure I had a nice seat in the front of the plane. It really makes a huge difference on a 10-hour flight. My nursery friends will appreciate I had the "Botrytis Semillion" dessert wine... for my non-nursery friends, Botrytis is fungus and a real problem in our nurseries. I also flew first class from Amsterdam to Helsinki. It was a KLM flight and I was the only person occupying a seat in first class. I got really good service. The captain came out and sat down with me for a while. He looked like he was about 25 years old, but was very friendly and interested in why I was returning to Finland. My final leg to Kuopio was delayed about 40 minutes. Maria Poteri was again waiting for me at the airport, and delivered me to Suonenjoki. And, once again, she supplied me with some goodies to get by, including a nice cold beer. Bless her. I'm once again back in the guest apartments, same place I started. I went to bed at 20:00 to see if I could kill off the jet lag.