QCon: Day 1

As introduction I will mention that I was sent by Aqris to the QCon conference in London. I'll try to give sum up each day here.

I'll just note that I wrote all of this last night in a hurry and have not edited it really. But here it is.

Things started off by hurrying everywhere. First, we left to office 15 minutes late and had only about half an hour to get from our office to the checkin. Fortunately we had a good taxy driver and it went well. We arrived at the check-in on time and even got seated side-by-side in the plane. Unfortunately that was not the case with the London plane.
Flight to Helsinki was ok. As it was the first time I had ever flown, everything was very exciting for me. Could not stop stearing out the window and amazing 'we are really above the clouds', and the sky is blue here, fantastic).
But when arriving at Helsinki our problems started. The first flight came in little bit too late. We landed at 15:30 and boarding for the London flight ended about 15:45. First we had to find out which terminal we have to get to. Then we sprinted for the gate. Got some good excercise. Again everything went well and me made it on time again, but just about.
The flight and everything went well. Then we reached London and I must admit Heathrow is not the most modern of airports. But it was not that bad either. We managed to find our way through the maze of all the corridors, got our bags and started our journey to the hotel. First we had some discussions with the ticket salesman at the info desk in the London underground (subway). She convinced us that it would be best for us to get a 7 day ticket which cost about 25 pounds. And we could not pay with a card there. I was I glad that I took Marit's advice and changed enough cash to buy tickets for both of us. The good thing is, now we don't have to worry about tickets anymore. We can travel by underground or bus for the next as many times as we like. After buying the tickets we planned our journey. I basically knew which station we need to get to and then we decided on the route. We opted to take a little bit longer route, but then we had to change trains only once. What we did not know that our little bit longer route ended up travelling by London underground for one and a half hours! That was a bit crazy, but we finally reached our station.
Now the fun stuff started. Neither of us actually excactly knew where the hotel was supposed to be. I kinda remembered the street. So we started walkin in some direction hoping we were on the right street and will run into that hotel easily. Well we did not. After walking back and forth on the same street for the third time we decided to look at the hotel reservation sheet for the adress (I remembered that it was something like 39 or 49 or 51 or something like that). Well I looked that it was 49. Ok then we looked where was a house with the number 49 on that street. I have to mention that in London it is not that customary to have numbers on houses and also they do not think that the numbers should always be consequetively. Some times they tended to be a little mixed. Anyway after we could not find building with number 49 on that street we just went into some coffe shop and asked for directions finally. And then showing the reservation sheet to the waiter there I saw that we are actually on the wrong street! After this came out we quickely left the coffee shop to find the street. And of course I forgot to ask where it was. I guessed, well I remember it is close to the undeground station on this street so therefore it must the next parallel street to this. Well I thought wrong. After going back and forth on the next street for a while Risto was already a bit fed up with my navigation skills. He looked at some map I had to find the street we were supposed to go to. But it was not on the map. At least we could not find it. Then I was already in a really frustrated mood and thought about which train station I'm going to sleep in. But fortunately a women came down the street we were on and I had courage to admit to here that we are lost. We were in luck as she knew excactly where she was and we were and how to get to the street our hotel was on. Actually it was the next parallel street, so almost.
Finally we made it to our destination. All together I guess we spent at least 2 or even 3 hours travelling from the airport to our hotel. But we are here know.
There are some funny things with the hotel also. First I managed to lock the safe that is in our room and did not enter the key (it is just not my day). I did inform the staff here and they said they will open it some time soon. Second the phone in our room did not work. Managed to fix that because the problem was just with the connector. Then we discovered that it is actually not possible to lock the bathroom door. So when going to take care of your business, please be so kind to notify your roommat. There is more. We discovered that when the power is on in the room (we have to use our door card to turn on the power in the room) something next to our bed makes a very annoying buzzing sound. We managed to fix that by just turning off and on the power many times with the card. On every forth time the buzzing stops. All in all the room is ok. Nothing special, but is not bad either.
This about sums up our adventures on the first day. I really hope the next days will be easier. But will see. We actually do not know that well how to get to the conference center either. I again know the stop we have go to off using the underground and that is it. At least I know that it is opposite Westminster Abbey. And probably most locals can show us the way there.
Now the time is getting late already and we have to get up early in the morning.