On Thursday 8. October it was time for me to travel on leave to Finland. This leave came unexpectedly early, after only four weeks in theatre. I'm not complaining, but four weeks was barely enought to get acclimatised and it went really, really quickly. Anyway, when the time and opportunity to go on leave comes up, it mustn't be missed. We left Aybak very, very early and arrived at Marmal just in time, only to find out that the plane was delayed by about 10 hours. I spent the day laying in the sun, walking around the camp, reading, taking pictures and watching movies. When we finally took off it was only hours before sunset.
The departures hall at Camp Marmal. (There is no arrivals hall, propably because all the arrivals go straight to work!)
We landed in Finland very, very early (local time) on the next day. It was dark, the temperature was more than 30 degrees lower than in Mazar-e Sharif (five below zero) and there was no dust in the air. I got a lift home with a colleague - after we had scraped the ice off the windows of his car. On my leave, I'm looking forward to sleeping, walking with the dogs and swimming. And seeing all the people who I haven't seen for four weeks.
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