Spendthrift Shoestring

Finland

Finland has been interesting, inspiring, and mystifying. The past week's tour of Helsinki, Turku, and Kuopio has been fab and on occasion dizzying. I've experienced my first smoke sauna, fought off mosquitoes in a rainy spruce forest, wondered at the many Swedish and Russian influences, and found myself confounded time and time again by the Finnish language. More to follow. For now, three images of Finland from the past six days.

Newspaper weather map.

Illuminated apartment address marker, Turku.

Finnish Railways train car signage.

Wizz Air Rising

A very interesting article by Sean Carney and Leos Rousek in the Wall Street Journal yesterday argues that Wizz Air is very adeptly taking advantage of what has become a weak Central/Eastern European budget airline market. As SkyEurope stumbles—the airline successfully applied for bankruptcy protection last week—and the effort to privatize CSA Czech Airways is postponed, Wizz Air is moving forward in the region as a serious player.

Carney and Rousek point out that Wizz Air will fly to all but two of SkyEurope's destinations by the end of the summer, leaving the beleaguered SkyEurope little room to argue for a distinctive route map. Wizz Air is also developing Prague as an additional hub, which will bring it into further—and in some cases direct—challenge with Czech Airways.

Wizz Air is known among LCC followers as a bare bones operation. The perks are few and far between. If the budget airline comfort scale has Ryanair at 1 and Air Berlin at 5, Wizz Air is damn close to 1. But all this will cease to matter if Wizz Air effectively becomes the biggest player in Central and Eastern Europe and keeps its fares dirt cheap in the process. For the airline to capitalize on its growth, I have the following six recommendations:

1. Oppose the fee and surcharge madness afflicting budget airlines in Europe by branding and publicizing an outright refusal to tack such costs onto fares.

2. Expand routes from Bulgaria and Romania into Germany, Scandinavia, the UK, Germany, Spain, and Italy.

3. Develop routes between Turkey and Germany, Scandinavia, and the UK. Target these expansions to family and business travelers, not holiday travelers.

4. Develop routes to the former Yugoslavia and Albania. No budget airline has aggressively moved into the Western Balkans, and there is much room for maneuver here. Target migrant and holiday travel streams alike.

5. Give us something exciting. Baku? Tbilisi? Trabzon? Minsk? Budget European explorers want new corners of continent to explore. Become our new favorite airline.

6. Add a carbon offsetting option at check out.

To Belfast on Jet2

Earlier today on Twitter I won a free ticket on Jet2 to Belfast by being the first person to name the seat of Northern Ireland's Assembly. Now I've got to find a way to plan a trip that will allow me to take advantage of this free ticket.

Who ever said that Twitter was only good for tracking celebrities and encouraging and documenting uprisings?

Trio Buzz: Taiwan, Porter, SkyEurope

A flurry of buzzy briefs:

1. Taiwan's Tourism Bureau is running a huge competition for travel writers. It's a complicated and multistage affair, which involves setting up an itinerary, following it, writing about it—and then, if you're lucky, winning a massive NT$1 million to spend a month touring the island. The deadline for applications is June 30.

2. Last week Porter announced a new Toronto City Centre-Boston route, which kicks off September 14.

3. Airscoop is reporting some bad news for SkyEurope. The plucky Slovak low-cost carrier had a plane seized on Monday at Paris Orly, after failing to pay fees to the airport. The following day, officials at Bucharest Airport followed suit, claiming that SkyEurope owes the airport €529,000. See the background story in the Slovak Spectator.

List: Local NYC Faves, Air Berlin Deals

I'm not in countdown mode for my Nordic adventure quite yet, but I have been very busy of late—with the cryptically aforementioned Project K as well as a huge backlog of other obligations.

Two notes.

1. Two local faves made it into Monocle's July/August issue: Café Select, which I raved about here back in January, and the nearby McNally Jackson Bookstore.

2. European readers—or anyone intending to spend any time in Europe soon—ought to get online immediately to try to nab some very cheap Air Berlin flights. How cheap? Fares begin at €29 for one-way flights throughout much of Europe; at €149 for one-way flights to destinations in North America; and at €199 for one-way fares to destinations as far-flung as Bangkok and Windhoek. These fares have been released in celebration of the airline's thirtieth birthday. Best of all, they include all taxes and charges. This promotion is on through tomorrow.

Brits Traveling Less, UK Getting Fewer Visitors

Travelmole's Bev Fearis is reporting that British outbound tourist numbers are down sharply in 2009. Citing provisional figures from the International Passenger Survey, Travelmole observes that overseas trips in the first four months of 2009 are down 16 percent in comparison to the first four months of 2008.

Visits to the UK are down a full 10 percent in 2009.

These are not surprising developments considering the climate. The latter figure certainly helps explain why hotels in London are considerably less expensive this summer than they were last.

European Train Fares: Mind the Experts

There's a sheerly fantastic post on the EuroCheapo blog today on how to nab cheap European train fares. Written by Nicky Gardner and Susanne Kries of hidden europe, the post is indispensable for budget-oriented travelers who don't want to be fleeced. Gardner and Kries come up with one dramatically-illustrated general suggestion: book your train journeys on the DeutscheBahn site. The post compares fares offered through UK and US agencies to those offered on the DB site, and finds that the latter offers much less pricey fares.

The DB site is also good for constructing fantasy train journeys. Just saying.

Air Berlin's Cheap Air Pass

Air Berlin, in partnership with Niki, just announced its city tour pass, a great summer air pass for travelers aged 18-27. For €199, participants get five air passes for air travel between 34 destinations across Europe and beyond. Pass holders don't have to follow a direct path, either; participants can fly from, say, Düsseldorf to Helsinki and then from St. Peterburg to Berlin.

The 34 cities covered by the pass include destinations as far afield as Tel Aviv, Moscow, Barcelona, Manchester, and Oslo.

The pass is good for travel throughout July and August. The €199 includes taxes and charges. There are only 3000 air passes available—time is of the essence, kids.

New York: Cold T5 at JFK and Airplane Tears

I'm in San Francisco on a three-day working trip, burrowed away with Nathan on what he's calling "Project K." Two things. First, Terminal 5 at JFK, as Rob Verger pointed out earlier this week in his World Hum posts on spending 24 hours at JetBlue's terminal at JFK, is kept very cold. After an hour waiting for my flight out west, I was already feeling the tug of chilled, annoyed sinuses.

The flight to SFO was fine, if a few minutes late. I jumped off the plane and made it to Yank Sing for lunch with Phil and Betsy, who just moved to San Francisco this week.

While still in flight, however, I found myself afflicted by a very unusual condition: the unemotional crying jag. In the middle of listening my way through the new Sounds album—more specifically while a very appealing track called "Midnight Sun" was playing—I started to inexplicably tear up. Why is it that tears come so readily in flight? Every now and then I come across an acknowledgment that other people experience this phenomenon, but I've never seen any explanation of it. Anyone?

PDX: Headwaters Cafe/The Empress Food Cart

Portland is the promised land for food that is both good and cheap, and the city's hundreds of food carts are partially responsible for the city's reputation as a place to fill up well for little. Portland's food carts are receiving a lot of deserved attention these days, which is all good.

My cousin Jason Robertson runs one of Portland's best food carts. For years, Robertson has helmed a catering business called Headwaters Cafe. And now he's running a great food cart at SW 3rd and Ash in downtown Portland, which he operates out of a vintage Streamline trailer. Food Carts Portland, the definitive guide to the food cart scene in the city, reviewed Headwaters/The Empress back in March.

I've been lucky enough to eat my cousin's delicious grub for years. Now anyone in Portland can do so as well, cheaply (from $5) and effortlessly. Run, walk, or tiptoe your way toward his sandwiches and salads at SW 3rd and Ash.