CENTRAL EUROPE BLOG May 12th, 2026 - MUNICH to HELSINKI

 

5/12/26– The window being open works perfectly and I had a nice, restful sleep. Our checkout is at 12pm but our flight isn’t until 6:35pm, so we’ll have several hours to kill today between then. Most likely we’ll use this as our first full rest day.

We check out of the hotel at noon, purchase a bus ticket online and walk about two minutes down the road to the stop. The rain is starting again and it’s cold enough for me to put on gloves, but we only wait ten minutes before it shows up.

Once at Munich airport, we get lost on where to go. We see Terminal 2 in front of us and try to follow a sign toward Terminal 1 but after walking about three minutes we see another sign telling us Terminal 1 is back where we just came from. Confused, and frustrated since we’re dragging our luggage, we circle back only to find Terminal 1 hidden under a platform. Weird but okay.

We then walk another ten minutes through the terminal to Gate D for check-in only to find that we’re too early to drop off our bags. I mean we did arrive five hours before our flight but was hoping. Once again, we double back to the main entrance area to sit down and chill for the next few hours.

While waiting, we hit up a grocery store (yes, there’s actually a full-on supermarket at the airport selling frozen items and everything). The prices are very cheap so we grab some practical stuff for our journey, me- fruit parfait and a drink, Kelvin- two beers and cereal… I didn’t even ask questions.

Around 3pm we finally check in our bags and go to our gate. No one asks to see our passport at anytime, only our plane ticket through a scanner, so that’s interesting. We then proceed to wait another two hours at the gate, passing the time watching small birds slide across the floor while eating a Toblerone chocolate bar.

We board our flight to Helsinki, Finland at 6pm and as we prepare to take off I hear the child behind me screaming, the older gents next to me yapping away and coughing all around us. Mind you this is a very small (2 seats on each side) plane so I’m already antsy. In fact, within the first twenty minutes after takeoff we experience heavy turbulence that lasts about ten minutes or so. I knew this flight was going to HEL I just didn’t realize it was the flight from hell.

The rest of the two hour trip isn’t that bad though as the plane settles and the child behind us moves to another seat. We land at 10pm (one hour time zone ahead of Germany), grab our bags and take an Uber thirty minutes to our AirBnb.

        

As soon as our host is done explaining the nuances of the apartment, we head out to find food. A sixteen minute walk later we find a taco bell of all places still open. Worth it!

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