When we got of the train with all our stuff we were approached by a lady of the local radio station. She changed the language to English after we replied her Finnish in Dutch. Why are you here? Do you know we have a Midsummer Air Show? Yes we do and that is why we are here! Where do you live? In Holland. You came all the way from Holland for our Air Show? No, …….we came all the way from Portugal. Two days and one night in the train and we arrived in mid Finland from mid Portugal. Leaving the radiolady speechless we went looking for the bus to Kuopio Rissala Air Base. Planning this part of our journey drove the lady at the train information desk crazy.

In that time we had the idea of travelling a month through Europe by rail. Roughly from Holland to Portugal to Finland to Switzerland to home. Kuopio had been given a place in the route after hearing there would be an air show with visiting Russian Air Force MiG29’s. Not having internet, email or post addresses looking back it was a gamble.

Kuopio being a military and civil airport we waited all day on the visitor terrazzo overlooking the runway and platform where the static was put up. There where some other interested guys including someone who claimed to be a Swedish “spotter”. He was very exited by the presence of the Russian MiG’s as were we all. Only this guy kept on going about details like the different radar and communications antennae. We wondered what exactly he wanted to spot and tried to keep some distance from him.

Later in the afternoon the gates opened and we got on. The static consisted of 5 aircraft. With all of them being of the Finnish Air Force ( Suomen Ilmavoimat), two being MiG21 and one a Draken we did not complain. A lot of activity kept us busy until the show began. I think it was not before ten when the Russians took off. The light remains reasonably good during midsummer night. All in all I got about 50 aircraft with 7 of them being Russian. It took us about a week to get there and back but it was worth it