Planes, Trains, and Automobiles

Well, I'm getting prepared to leave for my trip to Finland. I will be leaving the states in just 2 more days. My trip will take me to Amsterdam, Holland and then I will board a high speed train and travel down to Belgium for 3 days. I am meeting up with some coaches in Brussels and scouting a European League Football game just outside the city. I also plan on meeting up with my boss from the college and one of my colleagues from our teacher ed. department They will be traveling over there during our spring break to teach some classes at a Theological seminary in Brussels. The last part of my travels in Belgium involves going down to Bastogne for a day to visit some World War II battle sites, memorials, and museums. I am a big WWII history buff, so this is right down my alley. The area around Bastogne is where the Battle of the Bulge took place as Hitler made one final offensive to defeat the Allied forces. Many Americans lost their lives in and around this rugged area of Belgium known as the Ardennes. Some of you may have seen the series "Band of Brothers", which is based on the experiences of the soldiers who fought in this area. After my time in Belgium, I will be heading back up to Amsterdam to fly out to Helsinki, Finland. I have one night there and then the team is flying me up to Seinajoki for a visit and a 3 day minicamp. I am excited about visiting Finland and getting to meet the other coaches and many of our players. We have a series of meetings and practices planned over these 3 days, so it should keep me fairly busy. The visit to Finland will also help me get acquainted with the area where we'll be living for the summer. I'm hoping that I will have some decent weather on this trip, so I can take in some sights and not have any issues with my travel itinerary. I had some rough weather when I visited western Europe about 3 years ago to visit my friends Darryl and Alex. It was a true planes, trains, and automobiles experience. It goes a little something like this.
I flew into Munich, Germany in late February and the weather was fairly rough on the way in. My friends picked me up and we spent a very dreary day visiting Dachau. Dachau was a former concentration camp used by the Nazi party in WWII. The Nazis imprisoned, worked, tortured, and executed many Jewish citizens. It was a very somber experience. After our time there, we spent a day or two in Farchant, Germany, which is a quaint little village in the German Alps where my friends lived. Alex left to visit her family in Italy and Darryl and I returned to Munich to catch a flight to Poland. We had decided to fly up to Krakow to spend a few days getting acquainted with the city. On the day we were supposed to fly out, the weather really turned for the worse. Our flight to Poland kept getting delayed and the snow just kept on falling. Flights were getting canceled as the day wore on. We finally boarded the small aircraft in the late afternoon, but the weather just wasn't letting up. We sat on the plane for over an hour and watched them de-ice the aircraft. Finally, they decided to cancel our flight because visibility was so bad and a Russian airliner had skidded off the runway. We got off the airplane and the scene back in the airport was complete chaos. There were hundreds of people everywhere who were stranded. Lines snaked for what seemed like miles as people tried to get rerouted or put on any flight that might get them where they wanted to go. All flights ended up being cancelled and the airport ended up cancelling all flights again the next day as the worst snow storm in 50 years descended upon Western Europe. Darryl and I endured one long line, got a refund on our tickets and resolved to try Poland another time. Our gameplan was to take the tram to the train station and then take a train back to his home in Farchant. This would normally take just over an hour by train. We got tickets for the tram and then rode this to a station where we would pick up our train in about 20 minutes or so. When we walked outside to the boarding area, there was a train on the other side of the tracks that was full of people, but not going anywhere. The wind had now picked up and temperatures were well below 0 with the windchill. It continued to snow as we waited, but nothing was moving. We waited and waited and waited and finally gave up after about 2 hours of standing outside. It was now late at night and word spread that all the trains had stopped running because there was so much snow. We decided to leave and wander into Munich to see if we could find some accomodations. Finally, we located a hotel in the city center and rented there last available room. The next morning we tried to get a train, but the city was absolutely shut down. We decided to eat lunch in a local Italian restaurant and ponder our next move. About this time, we ran into one of Darryl's co-workers in the restaurant. We devised a plan to find a taxi driver who might brave the conditions and drive us back to Darryl's house. Darryl's colleague Henry also lived in this area. The only problem was the weather and the fact that Darryl lived about 55 miles away. Much of the trip would be on the autobahn, but what kind of taxi driver would be willing to take this on? After helping a few taxi's get out of some snowdrifts, we posed the question to one young driver. Surprisingly, he said yes. The three of us combined our money and off we went. We dropped one girl off in the city and then headed for our destination. The roads were treacherous, but our driver seemed to be fearless. He had fought in the war in Yugoslavia about 6-7 years before, had spent time in prison, and had now emigrated to Germany to be a race car driver, uh, I mean taxi driver. We were doing 70-80 mph on the autobahn on snowy ice covered roads!! The driver spoke some broken German, so I pleaded with my buddy to inform him to please slow down because I wanted to see my wife and kids again. He would slow down for a few minutes and then periodically had to be reminded again that we really did value our lives. After what seemed like an eternity, but was really only about an hour, we reached our destination. It had been a long few days, but we had survived this whole ordeal. This is one plane/train/automobile trip that I hope I never have to repeat. Lights out.