Preparation meeting in Helsinki

I think everyone is interested in how we are doing with our preparation towards next summer's symposium. This brings us to following topic, OC -meeting. We have been organizing many meetings after Symposium in Indonesia 2009, this is to guarantee success of the event! Every time there's a meeting it's going to be long, a really long meeting. This time I'm going to tell about experience on our way to Helsinki. Here we go!

We started our trip in the morning, because meeting in Helsinki would start in 3pm and it takes about 6 hours to drive it, with few stops. Weather was a bit cold but sun was shining. We had to go some places in the beginning so it slowed us down a bit and even the start was delayed. Hopefully our luxurious van was so quick and comfortable so the trip was nice. Acceleration was incredible, you can put pedal to the floor on hills and your speed will not change.

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Weather changed before we drove through Lahti and just before Helsinki it started to rain. Quick lunch in Helsinki University's restaurant, some beverages to our meeting and then it started. We don't even have the longest distance to meeting in Helsinki. Distance between Rovaniemi and Helsinki is almost 900km, around 12 hours of driving (with stops).

Meeting started a bit late and it took around 3,5 hours. Lot of things were discussed between OC participants, almost all of us were present at that time. New member of OC was introduced what is going on. People responsible of different areas held presentations of what has change since last meeting, what needs to be done and questions where OC can give answers.

After the meeting we went to SAUNA of course, we are in Finland! Have to say that the sauna was amazing, didn't feel like electricity sauna. Well we had to go standing outside to cool of, it felt nice (it was quite warm +2 or 4 degrees celsius and in sauna around +80). After that people went to different directions, few of us stayed and played some pool. I suck at pool, so losing was my part. When you will come to Finland you can try to challenge Osmo and Mikko.

Then people from Joensuu spend few days in Helsinki, seeing friends etc. before on Sunday we started our journey back to beloved Joensuu. Everything went well, we just noticed that we left Jenni the penny to Helsinki, but we were too far away to turn back! Wuups. Just kidding... On our way back, we changed driver in the midway and kilometers were running fast! I told you earlier that our van wasn't the speedbreaker and we got overtaken quite many times. Crazy Finnish drivers! You will see those more when we hit roads with three big buses. For sure. ;)

Here are again some pictures for your eyes:

Yep, we are still ice-fishing.

Part of the OC.

Mr. Rossi