Travelogue: Helsinki, Finland; Part 1
Root 35 - My experience with a Finn met at the airport.
Intro/outro sound is Prime Light Harp Melody 165 BPM.mp3 by snikpohneb — https://freesound.org/s/173463/ — License: Attribution 3.0
I wrote more privately about the troubles I had with my then-husband during this trip, but now I’d like to turn to the happy part of my journey to Helsinki.
The fun started at the JFK airport. I’m genuinely not being facetious. The man behind us in line to check in for our flight was a Finn. Now that I’ve been to Finland, this should have been glaringly obvious before I heard him speak—his complexion reminded me of porcelain, and he blushed just from me glancing back at him. We struck up a conversation with him, and the first few minutes consisted of him apologizing about how bad his English was, despite his seeming completely fluent.
He’d been touring NYC, and was returning home. He could not comprehend why two Americans were bound for Finland any more than I could comprehend the appeal of exploring NYC. I had lived in New York State and in Connecticut for a while, and never ventured to The City. It was too loud and too crowded to hold any interest for me. I knew from walking around downtown Chicago that neon lights and mind-bogglingly tall buildings made me distinctly uncomfortable.
He seemed less perplexed after we told him about the event—WorldCon 2017—that drew us to journey to his homeland. I felt a need to defend Finland against him. If I were to travel to a place without a particular event to go to, Finland seemed as fair a choice as any. It certainly wouldn’t be the bottom of the list. The man made comments about how there was nothing there, that the people were strange, that the weather was gloomy. I wondered what ideal he was comparing it to, in his mind. New York City?
He asked how we were getting to our Airbnb once we landed, and I said we’d planned to figure out the public transportation system once there—it had looked, from online, like a much better system of transportation than what I was used to. He offered to drive us there, and after much asking if he was sure on my part, we accepted. His kindness was touching. It was so strange to be offered such kindness, that a part of me wondered if he intended to rob or betray us. But there were two of us and one of him, so I discounted that as a serious possibility.
In the parking garage, I exclaimed over the cars. “They’re all the same!” Almost every one was a mini-SUV in gray or black. The outliers with color were almost universally muted in tone.
“Yeah,” he said, his demeanor saying this proved his point about how boring Finland was. “No one wants to stand out.” His own car was a black mini-SUV.
He drove us to our Airbnb, and said wearily that he hoped the weather got nicer for us. There were clouds in the sky, but the air was a perfectly comfortable room temperature, and it wasn’t windy. “It seems good to me!” I said. He met my enthusiasm with disbelief. I think that as he drove off, he was just as puzzled about our trip as he’d been when we first met.
Continue reading about my trip to Helsinki here.