When returning, I was situated next to the aisle and so I could stretch the feet into the free space and this was good indeed. Almost as if in business class. In the plane I had to fill in a minor form of customs formalities, that was then done by using the pencil of my neighbour. At that the official turned up his nose, for one was still supposed to do this by using a ballpoint pen (I had left one in my briefcase). The flight went over Russia and as an initial surprise, not by using the direct route over the Arctic Ocean but from Helsinki to Moscow and from there over Irkutsk. Then came the surpassing of Beijing and the flight across the Yellow Sea clear of North Korea. We landed at the Incheon airport that is located on an island of the Yellow Sea. The island, where the airport is located, is connected with the mainland by a bridge, under which even ships move. Occasionally, the seabed was visible during the ebb. The weather was poor when arriving: 23 degrees Celsius but it was raining hard. 
Initially, I had had the information that the hosts were only going to organise transport on 2 September and for this reason I had carefully studied at home the different possibilities of transport in the neighbourhood of Seoul. At the Helsinki airport I had tried to get a travelers’ guide, but as the price was pretty high (35 €), I had thought it better to rather waste this sum on tripping, than to give it to the trader. Before stepping into the plane, I had noticed the Hungarian team that were also on their way to the World Championships. Thus I had at least one ‘landmark’, on which to reckon when arriving in Seoul. The person who had lent me a pen when on the plane, turned out to be a female student called Sol, who was studying tourism in France. She was very helpful at the airport as well, guiding me where I had to go, so that I could reach there on my own. Unfortunately I had to give up her services, because at the pass control I had managed to reach Jan Palmqvist from the Swedish team. He was familiar for me due to the Nordic championship in Finland, and it also turned out that in addition to me and the Swedish team there were also representatives of four other countries (the Norwegians, Danish, Hungarians and an American) in the plane. Thus it was clear that we had to hold together and wish all the best to Sol, since it was likely that the Koreans had sent someone to receive us. 
The inner feeling was not wrong, although there was no-one at the gate, we waited for 5 minutes nearby and then an amateur appeared and asked us to wait a moment until the bus arrived. 2 hours later we were indeed in a hotel doing the check-in. Surprisingly, though we were driving on arterial highways, there were numerous traffic jams, that were slowing down the speed. The first major surprise was that I was not able to talk by my mobile phone while at the airport. It turned out that of all the mobile phones sold in Estonia, only 3,5 G was functioning there. Unfortunately, I didn’t have this one. I might have rented a phone that would had worked there for 3000 Wons a day, but for this purpose a credit card (that I principally don’t use) was necessary or a cash pledge of 200 000 Wons. I thought that I’d survive without a phone and would not make the trouble with renting.
Having reached the hotel La Vie D’or in Hwaseong at the outskirts of Suwon, I decided to familiarize myself with the neighbourhood. The tour came to an end a kilometre away from the hotel, as the pavement ended and one could go further only by car. Due to rain I didn’t go further on foot and didn’t dare to enter a bus, since there were no signs in Latin alphabet anywhere. I decided to return to the hotel and started the struggle with the time-lag, that meant then sleeping.
Before going to doze off I discovered that the hosts had arranged an Internet room where we could keep in touch with the news in the mother tongue throughout the contest. I slept till morning with almost one fit. In fact I had been vigil all the night before the trip and now I had to get even, so this procedure did not cause much trouble.
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