Gottland

"As if we had real seasons in this godforsaken country," Mika had once joked during an internet conversation across the Baltic sea.

The line made me smile, although I cannot really agree with my Finnish friend on his country's fate, nor on the seasons' matter. Neither does Paul, the friend soon to share my flat and my wonder at Nordic marvels; as he wittily pointed out, it rather seems to be the land where gods come on holiday: a dramatic oscillation from one extreme to another, between the inmost light and the utmost night, a vast wilderness of trees that icing winds sweep throughout relentless winters, ever to return to life again in the most opulent lushness -- always under the shape-shifting clouds in the immense, endless sky.


'Gottland' -- the term had subtly slipped into my mind while I wandered at Mikko's side on the paths of the Vuosaari hill, unrelated to the actual Swedish island-province; somewhat in the way Asgard shifts from the physical realm to the ideal one along the lines of the Edda saga.

A crossroad: From Lille's Rue de la Clef (right) to Vuosaaren Kaatopaikka.

My first visit of the Vuosaaren huippu took place on the very night of my return, and I came back there almost each day of the following week. Twice at night, for the top of the hill is a privileged location to observe the undying glimmer at the horizon.

The white dawn

Standing perched on the highest stone of the top feels like having one's head into the sky.

Valo.

The majestic hill is too picturesque to be true in this flat land -- actually, it is man-made. No such thing existed there only a dozen of years ago. When the decision was made to transfer the most significant part of Helsinki's port activity to the recently developed neighbourhood of Vuosaari (the municipality was absorbed within the capital in 1966), the endeavour's impact on the surrounding nature was diligently assessed under the careful watch of environmental lobbies and local committees. This procedure is compulsory in Europe and increasingly stringent under the famous Habitats and Birds EU directives, but it is hardly followed in other locations along the Baltic coastline -- see the disastrous case of the Estonian port of Saaremaa.

Funnily enough, the Google Maps shot of the Vuosaari hill is so old
it shows the area before the harbour's construction started. Hardly shows.

Back to the initial stage of the Vuosaari harbour project, not only the activity on a longer term was required to leave unharmed the lush wildlife and rare species of the nearby moors, but building industrial and transportation infrastructure from scratch would carve out a whole new landscape. Tons and tons of dug up ground and waste material do not vanish into thin air.

In the land I come from, the custom is to pile up at random mining rubble, which results in the aesthetic nonsense of terrils.

This too leaves me a little speechless.

With regard to Flemish-style terrils, the Vuosaari area is quite characteristic of the positive evolution of environmental conservation, and of the attention increasingly given to all the dimensions of human and industrial activities. The project was chosen as a flagship for stopping the loss of biodiversity through the Countdown 2010 initiative, a EU-funded programme aiming at increasing awareness of this environmental issue.

It earned recognition thanks to the innovating techniques used: Layers of ground of various qualities were unloaded on the site without intermediate storage, so as to keep the soil's properties and the wildlife alive through the process; the hill was thoroughly designed, its areas according to dedicated species, its roads and paths, up to the rocks, scattered more or less densely to affect ground temperature and leave room for a type of plant or another to grow.

Nowadays trucks still drive past the barrier to discharge waste material, which will be dispatched and delivered according to the plans.

The entrance.

Caution is mandatory, as it always is at this scale of land-building. Several disquieting-looking boards warn in Finnish of the consequences of inappropriate behaviour. "It is forbidden to scratch the slightest match here, for the whole landscape could explode," Mikko joked about the methane emanations of the landfill's decaying waste.

Once I was exploring the downhill forest paths at night, deliciously deserted and creepy in the dimmed light, a strong scent of fuel coming out of nowhere assaulted my sense of smell -- I had passed through one of those gas clouds threatening to burst at the first sparkle.

Varoitus!

A bit further inside the park, piles of dirt hidden under tarpaulin are circled by fences.

Zone 51. No trespassing.
Note the graceful Vuosaari tower in the background.

Walking up the path to the top, an imposing stump is on display, that of a 200-year old willow tree which grew near to Lasipalatsi, in the very centre of Helsinki; a terrible winter storm fell it a few years ago and for mysterious reasons it was moved away to remote Vuosaari.

Along the crest, familiar yet out-of-place silhouettes stand against the blue-white tints of the dawn sky. The unusual presence of bare Lapland trees amidst flowerbeds in full bloom is also a human invention; more precisely, a sculpture made of real displaced trees whose point remains rather mysterious too...
The voice of my once Reuters colleague Agnieszka rang again in my ears, as clearly as it did on our way back from Hanko in her minuscule and recklessly driven Fiat: "Do you know what annoys me there? You are supposed to drive in the complete wilderness, but they can't help keeping tidy roadside flowerbeds. It's so artificial!"



But the sight is worth climbing.

A little tedious to piece the 360-degree panorama together, but so worth the effort!
Here below, a commented version with the landmarks I could identify.
If you know more than me, please go ahead and tell in the comments!

There is a plenty of nice things down there. Dragonflies and butterflies, pheasants and pelicans; once, a circumspect and brightly coloured male pheasant popped out of the high grass while I was standing quietly less than a metre away, only to vanish on the other side after slowly crossing the road.

Climbing the path down on the sun-exposed hillside, it is not only the silence made salient by the remote humming of the harbour's activity, not only the plenty of colours and the warmth of the light; but whenever the afternoon sun appears from behind a cloud, a wave of the sweetest scent rises from the strawberry bushes down the hill...

And strawberry upon strawberry...

So much goodness must be put to good use. I'll tell more about strawberry adventures -- and there's a lot to tell -- in another entry.

According to Mikko, the Vuosaari huippu is not so well-known, even in Helsinki; besides biking amateurs and locals walking their dogs, it is rare to see many visitors. School trips are organised there though, according to official pages, so as to educate children about environment. I guess it is better so -- I see with reluctance already other people striding the same paths, my paths.

Those Sweet Finnish Oddities (1): The Housewife's Salvation

Wild karaoke nights are one in many surprising customs of Finland, I did announce in a previous entry; yet the distinctive and unfamiliar Finnish thinking does not only express itself on a night out. The best place to get acquainted with it might rather be their homes, for which Finns have a particular, affectionate attention -- it's after all their warm refuge against the winter's frost. And like for most of their cultural features, from design to administration, the emphasis is on one thing: simplicity.


Past the original shock at the sight of Finnish drying shelves, the foreigner vacillates for an instant between attributing the idea either to the most ingenious fool or to the most simple-minded of masterminds; then, two pressing questions arise: First, how on Earth could it be needed to invent something as self-evident as Finland's astiankuivauskaapit? And secondly: Wait, how come it is not used in every country's kitchens already?

The second question remains inexplicably unanswered, for drying shelves possess all the characteristics of a great innovation: it's simple, it's inexpensive and uncomplicated, and it represents a significant gain of time and energy in the everyday life. Judge by yourself:

You've been warned.
Finns are actually well aware of he ingeniousness of their astiankuivauskaappi (lit. dish-drying closet) which they designated among the country's top inventions in a 2008 poll, a Reuters colleague reported here. So why did the idea never cross the border? Yet another piece of evidence that the much-too-staged side of Finland offered to the world's view only aims at keeping their best within?

There is indeed much to treasure in the idea: while in the rest of the world, people struggle with cluttered draining boards and rickety racks, here they do the dishes and simply store them away inside the cupboard. The water is dripping from the racks into the sink below, and plates and glasses are conveniently ready for use in less time than needed to wipe them all dry. Et voilà...


The world's ignorance of Finland's astiankuivauskaappi is such that there's no official translation of the word in English, while its use only reached Sweden and Italy; a laconic Wikipedia page in native language indicates that the sparkle of lucidity came from a Household lecturer as early as 1945 -- Household studies being still nowadays a subject leading to academical degrees in Finland, often under the name "Home Economics".

That Maiju Gebhard was certainly a lovely person. She who aimed at reducing the strain of daily chores calculated that a housewife would spend 30,000 hours of her life doing the dishes. Her motto was "Tärkeintä kodissa ovat sen ihmiset" (The most important in a house is its inhabitants). Gebhard's plate-drying closets started to be manufactured in 1954 and became standardized in 1982.


Dishwashers may have shifted to some extent the dishes' burden from people's shoulders, but wherever it is not, once you've tried the housewife's salvation, you cannot go without.

Karaoke in Finland: Maybe, They Don't Have Good Cable

Amongst all of Finland's many peculiar ways, the oddest is doubtless the genuine fondness of its people for the most infamous art of the night: karaoke. While an outsider would expect from the land of metal music more "serious" customs to occupy its long, gloomy winter nights, taking the microphone in one of the two thousand karaoke places across Finland is less extraordinary than it seems at first glance. Less a craze than an truly popular hobby, whose widespread appeal beyond age and social status is the only really remarkable feature, in contrast with the tacky reputation it can't shake off in countries like France. After all, is there any more common thing than singing, particularly in this country of musicians? Stripped of the kitsch folklore of the performance, that is...

This is an extreme example of kitsch karaoke folklore.

Our preconceptions on fun and karaoke, if any, melted away from the first night out of the summer school held in Tampere in August 2007, as our group of international students happily stormed into the Manse Dance pub, located in refurbished central factory Finlayson. It was a bit of a chance, since we had found closed the door of the club we were heading to, and the group was about to split and scatter in the centre when someone spotted affordable drinks in a nearby bar.
The following cultural encounter was an unexpected success, as much for the light and very happy time we had there, massacring all together J. Karjalainen's standard Hän and doing hardly better on Tom Jones' Sex Bomb, as for the slightly stunned Finns challenged in their ordinary, half-empty bar routine, yet undeniably proud to see foreigners upholding Finland's most treasured tradition.

In Finland, karaoke is to be found in many places and forms. A few months after that first experience, I witnessed an even less likely spectacle in Tampere's Inferno, while killing time between the end of a concert by my favourite German black metal band and the morning bus which would bring me back to the peaceful suburb of Kaukajärvi. After the concert venue closed, the attendance had moved to the hard rock and metal club, a franchise established in a few cities around Finland. As bizarre as it could seem to play this kind of harsh music in a night club, it wouldn't sound nearly as bizarre as the idea of organizing there a karaoke that would truly fit the atmosphere. And yet... My friend Markus, who had come along to the concert, shouted to my ear through the roaring that the current performer looked very much like the frontman of Swallow the Sun, and that his buds were part of Ensiferum, or another rather well-known metal band from Finland. Covers of Metallica classics are often priceless.

But that is not all. To the example of radio-crochet in the French sixties, which brought to the public light most of the yé-yé stars of then, a significant share of Finnish singers (popular music and less accessible genres altogether) have been revealed through karaoke competitions. Even for those which Nature has not gifted with a facility for singing, karaoke can be put to good use, as the practice on which an afterparty conversation with Finnish progressive metalheads, some night in Tampere's Klubi, shed light: "- Recording vocals in studio without playing guitar at the same time was easier, but for the live my bandmates had me go through a lot of karaoke..."


Yet watching shan't suffice. A foreigner willing to know the real Finnish experience has to be ready to walk, in turn, into the spotlight. A first attempt from my Finnish friends to get me there, to no avail though, took place in Helsinki's Satumaa just over a year ago; my reserve overcame by a narrow margin the curiosity for how it would feel to sing before so many Finnish eyes. Next time, we'll get you to sing, I had been warned; that would let me around a year to brace myself for the two minutes and a half of fame.

In the course of all parties held at the friend's place where I currently reside, a passage by the local karaoke-pizza-bar conveniently located right down our windows is mandatory. The small get-together for the occasion of my return made no exception. From the morning on, a very few photograph shots still linger in my mind, while the most of these hours sank in a sea of bliss and joy; mostly, it is the soft blue shade of the luminous night which brought me to tears, faces I had missed, words that rang and still resound now. In the White Nights bar, we flipped the pages of the English-language list until early in the morning, finding nothing appropriate until a decision had to be made -- and since this time couldn't be missed, I settled on one of the few songs I had in my poor repertoire . We rushed to fill the tiny form before the karaoke stopped accepting them, not enough time to figure a good funny alias for my name as it's customary -- Juulia would do, as I am more and more frequently called -- then we handed in the paper.

The party went on with a few more songs and even more drinks, I assume, and the next thing I remember is the call of the barman: Nyt Juulia! My friends cheered me on just like I was climbing on the ring, I rushed to the counter, grabbed the microphone and flew to the stage.

You're just too good to be true
Can't keep my eyes off of you...

I had always assumed I couldn't sing. I had hardly tried. I wasn't out of tune, at least not too much, though I fear my advanced drunkenness glorified it a bit. I only missed the start of a verse, and was, I think, at the right distance from the microphone.

And I just totally enjoyed it.

I danced during the break, too.

Perhaps, again, did the many drinks magnify the loudness of the applause, but I think the sparse Finnish audience enjoyed it too.


Many songs, from Sodankylä to Summer Wine, have their own history for those who interpret and those who watch, in as many as the two thousand karaokes taking place across Finland. The origins of its inhabitants' affinity for late-night singing, with several world records as a testimony of their passion, remains a barely documented mystery. I'd be inclined to think that the misplaced reserve Western Europeans have toward artistic performance has something to do with their abnormal disregard for the discipline; behind this, the distance they introduce between them and the stage allows for a scathing criticism which would discourage the bravest heart to have a go at singing -- be it to rock it or to sound like a thousand cats.

While I cannot really tell when it comes to the French quality of performers, it is safe to say most of the Finnish ones are capable of singing, which doubtlessly helps to take the plunge. Their relation without complexes to music might play a large part in their affection for that strange hobby. Or, if you'd rather follow the opinion of a Karaoke Traveler columnist: "Perhaps they are no different than everyone else except that they are simply ahead of the curve in a worldwide movement to take karaoke beyond being a pastime and elevating it to a rewarding spectator sport that promotes self expression and camaraderie. Or maybe, they don’t have good cable, who knows."

Saapuminen

The muted humming of the reactors, vast mountains of thunderstorm clouds piercing up through the dense heat haze and the sunlight, brighter than anywhere on earth... I dozed on and off in the plane until reaching the Swedish land, upon which excitement gradually rose. The pilot announced we were flying over Gothenburg, and I thought of Hanna, who had returned there after living half a year in our five-people French-Nordic house-sharing in Lille, France. Which coasts were these? Not Finland's yet. The landscape was still a little too uneven, read: messy. Ah, and here are the Åland islands, dark green and scattered over the silver sea; we were drawing nearer. It had been quite many times since I first flew over the Gulf of Bothnia, and I could easily recognize Turku on the western coast of Finland; then it grew harder to identify anything in the endless imbrication of lakes, forests and modest urban areas.

Fifteen minutes to landing. Cabin crew, take your seats. We had started our descent toward Vantaa airport. I rummaged through the pile of coats and bags to grab my mp3-player, browsed until I find the one meaningful, superb, heroic travel song I wanted to play for that instant. I looked back -- just as we emerged under the clouds, and -- I could barely believe my eyes facing the breathtaking scenery: it should have been dusk, yet warm, golden sunrays were piercing through the clouds, pouring light over the forests and the lakes, illuminating patches of the landscape whose brightened colours shimmered against the fresh shadow of clouds... And all the space from there to the sky, to the immense sky, filled with light... I couldn't smile any larger, and the passengers surely thought I was a fool.

Á stjörnuhraða
Inni í hjarta springur, flugvélarbrak

The drumming reached its climactic finale seconds before we landed.

Of the next minutes, barely more than flashes subsists. I must have been struck too hard by bliss for anything to leave its imprint on my mind. At the baggage claim, a young metalhead who reminded me of my Oulu friend Jari was trying to spot a red suitcase on the conveyor belt. Punainen laukku. I still could grasp what was going on around. I grew a little anxious when mine took so long to show up; it finally appeared, miraculously unopened and in one piece (and no wine dripping from the bottom, which is a good sign) in spite of the strange fact that the straps had been removed and carefully placed on the belt, besides the suitcase. For the sake of my bottles, the padlock had proved to be an insurmountable obstacle...

I hurried to the bus platform outside, painfully dragging my unbreakable suitcase, the smaller one which I had at last managed to close, the wannabe laptop bag, my heavy coat which was as unnecessary in Finland as it was in France -- in Helsinki, temperatures had reached a pleasant 26°C chilled by a fresh sea breeze -- or as it had been first time I naively moved to Finland in the summer, expecting anything but summer, and still in stilettos. I don't recall waiting there either. The sky sucked me in... It does not only look unbelievably higher and wider than farther South, but also, for some reason, clearer, as it really is: not a plain blue painted ceiling à la Truman Show, a direct look at the immensity of the cosmos instead, pastel-tinted by a very present and visible light diffracting on the thin veil of the atmosphere. (I'll put it down to the absence of the pollution layer so characteristic of French cities, particularly in summer.) All along the forty-minute bus ride from Vantaa to Helsinki downtown, I would smile enraptured, staring at the sky, the bilingual indication boards and the well-groomed suburban residences.

Besides their neat, modern and often colourful architecture, partly due to a later urban development than in Old European countries, Finnish buildings have features a foreign eye would find surprising. First and foremost, windows. Not that one would expect Finnish houses to have none, but in Southern regions, large windows tend to be associated with loss of heating during winter months -- and rightly so, trust the experience of someone who spent the previous year in a French century-old rundown house. And contrary to what a foreigner could expect, Finnish houses do have windows. Huge windows.

This is an example.

Yet a different logic is at work where people must brave harsher temperatures and darker days: while survival takes precedence over energy saving as a top priority, the purpose of picture windows and aerial glass architecture became obvious to my amazed eyes as days grew shorter... and sunlight scarce enough to make anyone avid of the slightest beam, especially indoors.
Elegant and aerial meaning not mindless: any home's window is double-glazed at least, sometimes triple-glazed like I saw once in a student residence in Northern Oulu -- quite common-sense for the double purpose of preventing a greater loss of heating and keeping a very high temperature inside, necessary not to be struck down by the outside cold.
While in continental Europe double-glazing becomes only gradually a standard, at least in newly-built eco-friendly houses, it would be unfair to consider Finns' ecological reputation as unwarranted, or at least it would show much ethnocentrism to do so... even if the odd habit of our Finnish housemates to run heating full power in our Lille home for fear they would freeze to death was irrational to say the least!

The bright and lively paritalot left place to older Jugend buildings as we approached the older city centre. Here and there, between two elegant edifices, glimpses of familiar figures popped up: the stadium, the TV tower which overlooks my Pasila forest -- and suddenly we were in Sörnäinen, driving down Hämeenkatu, and at the following corner Töölö came within sight, its lushness where lavish wooden houses hide, its lake and water jets I had crossed by the bridge every day of last summer on my way to work, all bathing in the golden sunset light. The fountains' water seemed to spring at our passage. Töölö disappeared in turn behind the buildings nearing Hakaniemi marketplace -- and then I didn't know where to look as places I knew unfolded along Kaisaniemenkatu. The bus entered Rautatientori, slowly drove around the square as on an victory lap, and parked smoothly while I was eagerly looking by the window to spot the reception committee.

The committee consisted in a big, bearded, barely blond Mikko trying to spot la petite J in the coach bus from the other side of the street. He had proven to be the awesomest friend from the infamous night we met, taking care of my Czech friend Katerina and me in Oulu, seeking pizzas in drowsy Pasila during equally infamous summer party nights, bringing the fun in Funland, and in many, many, many more occasions.
I jumped out of my seat, figured that I ought first to bring my suitcases out of the bus from the seat besides, managed to get one in the flow of outgoing passengers, to finally leave everything in the way to grab my friend for a hug (like it is customary here, instead of the French bise) as soon as he was within reach. "You're, like, whoohoo!!" did he deduce from my ectatic face after we carried my belongings onto the pavement. Although perched on my heels, everything seemed bigger than in my memories; otherwise, the train station and its square felt ravishingly, deliciously normal, like a place I wouldn't have left for more than a few days.

It was all the more so true on the other side of the station, along which I had rushed every day of last summer to go to work at Kamppi. The corporate buildings were bathing in rose sunset light by the window of beer restaurant Ooster, quite typical of a certain category of fancy pubs in Helsinki, with their cosy decoration, dimmed light and warm atmosphere. Two cocks for your return, witty Mikko said while setting two half-a-litre glasses of Kukko beer on the table. The five months since our last encounter in France, where he toured with the ambient-ritual project I met most of my friends through, vanished in a blink of an eye. The boys had just returned from recording new music in the North, and everybody was quite excited about it; some more instruments would be added to the tracks during the summer, et voilà. Mikko invited me again to his concert with yet another band in Oulu early August, which I would certainly attend, since the only plans I had so far for the summer were still pending -- and if my traineeship in the news agency I worked in last year would be confirmed, a Friday off wouldn't be a big deal for sure.

"Maybe we could go to my countryside for a weekend or so," Mikko mentioned at some point; "it is about a three-hour drive to..." I missed the details upon realising what I had just heard. However hard the efforts a foreigner would make to integrate in Finland, however successful he or she would be in this challenge, managing, even, to obtain the unattainable Finnish Social Security Number, the ultimate line between a Finn and a non-Finn is drawn by the ownership (by some relative, at least, as long as you can go there) of one of the 475.000 mökit of Finland. Most Finnish people retreat to their summer cottages (kesämökki) as soon as beautiful days arrive, emptying the city's streets to the astonishment of tourists. For these reasons, a mere invitation to someone's mökki -- put aside the all too social cottage weekends of student unions -- sounds like the greatest honour to the Finnish aficionado I am. Well, we would see...

We took off from Ooster, still and ever carrying luggage, to take the metro towards my friend's place in Eastern Helsinki, where I agreed upon a sohva-alivuokra for the month of July, before moving into my own flat. I have always found curious the dislike Finns visiting the Lille underground had for Helsinki's roomy and clean metro, but in the dusk's light I had to admit their main recrimination was true: it is really insanely orange. Kulosaari passed by, and I stuck my face to the windowpane to catch a glimpse of the building I would live in during the autumn months. Past the rented gardens of Kulosaari manor, against the darker sky, several identical tower buildings rose within our view on the hill next Herttoniemi metro station. I had wondered many times from the few pictures I had how the place would be, but would have never imagined it could overlook the whole area. From behind there, I could imagine, one could run down the gentle slope of the hill toward the shores of Saunalahti bay, to the sea... I hardly took my eyes off the imposing silhouette of the edifices, growing smaller and blending into the night as we rode further East.

We had missed the last buses departing from Vuosaari metro stop, but weather and light were good enough for a little sightseeing, nevermind the suitcases. Mikko stopped us for a minute to tell about the Vuosaari tower, which was originally planned to become the central point of the area, a true landmark towards which all sights would converge. If today one can't indeed miss the building, wherever one would stare from, even kilometres away, it is less its majestic allure than the mildly endurable architectural failure it represents that catches the attention. No real offence to the eye, at least to regular housing estate's standards, square and white; but the motive to erect this in the highest point of the area, worse than that, to set the centre of the district's life in a housing building, raises many questions (let alone eyebrows)... No wonder why the tower's flats are trading so high; it might be the only place where it does not show in the view...

Dusk was blue and mild, and smelled of trees; we walked silently the street up to Mikko's place. Monster suitcase definitely perished on the way, when one of the wheels melted under the strain... We dropped the luggage in the flat, which had been nicely furnished since last time I visited it, and had a glass of port wine; "are you up for a walk?" Mikko asked, and I said yes, climbed down, at last, from my heels to switch with more appropriate shoes, and we went out to the quiet night. A few hundreds of metres away from Mikko's flat, a former landfill had been turned into a beautiful natural landscape, still rather largely ignored by tourists, and barely more favoured by locals. We passed under a bridge and went through a hilly forest road, then round an old barrier; a checkpoint house was standing there alone, abandoned; we walked on, and round a pile of waste material, the fires of the setting sun had ignited the sky, toward the North; a stunning scenery. We climbed the man-made rock paths up to the highest point, stood upon the largest rock at the top, from which one could see at Juhannus bonfires as far as Porvoo; and as soon as we ran down the hillside toward the nearly silent harbour, I could swear the sky was clearing, almost white over the crest.

I could hardly take my eyes off the dawn breaking at the horizon. We went back home, and beyond this point I don't recall much. Lying in bed, I fell asleep in a matter of seconds; not enough even to think how great of a day it was.

Valises, Valises

If my long-awaited journey back to Finland was one of the sweetest and smoothest, and feeling oddly non-exceptional, considering it had been months since I last was on a plane, it was in contrast an epic ordeal luggage-wise.

My father happened to be in town, and since mom's car had broken down the day before, he was to drive me to the train station from which I would depart to Paris' Roissy airport. It was a clear, warm and sunny morning, the last I would see from France for a while at least, and I hadn't slept much -- and much was still to be packed, contrary to the last time I moved to Finland, when suitcases were up and ready well into the night. I have grown relaxed on these matters, which is not really my mother's case, and she was grabbing random belongings scattered through the house with a little more anxiety than me, keeping a wary eye on the clock -- being fashionably late is a family trait, and not exactly inherited from her side...

Upon his arrival, my father found me in the living-room, standing, better, trampling on my suitcase to be dropped, which squarely refused to close. Surely the various cans of bizarre French delicacies destined to the friends up there and stuffed into pieces of clothing, and the three bottles of wine on top of it, had something to do with these technical difficulties. The cartoon-like sight of me trying to zip up the huge suitcase while perched on it with skyscraper heels was complete when the said zip decided to pop open along its closed section. Well. Heavy-duty straps would do fine from there to the train, where I would have to rethink wisely the very idea of cramming so much stuff into a single item of luggage.

We lifted up the monster suitcase -- it seemed to weigh well over the thirty-two kilogrammes allowed as maximum limit by flight company Blue1, not even mentioning any extra fee for kilogrammes above twenty. The smaller suitcase was densely packed to say the least, and my laptop case was in fact a regular briefcase using the fact it contains a laptop amongst a hundred other things to pretend it's a laptop case. Add to this that I was wearing the heaviest and warmest coat not to have to carry it along, by a sunny +30°C day, and you get an idea of what the word ordeal means. We were running late; I embraced my heartbroken mother at the doorstep (with a dog in the boot, the luggage in the backseat, and my father's girlfriend on the passenger's seat, there was no room for her...) and we drove off to the train.

The first part of the train ride, stopping at Lille for a connection to the airport, finally gave me a chance to catch my breath: by some divine intervention, the zip smoothly slid up and the suitcase, at last, closed. (And much to my delight I did not need to repeat the same manoeuvre than I did earlier at home.)
The intermittent flashes of sunlight by the train's rounded-cornered doorwindow reminded me of something. I sat on the rumble seat nearby in the summer torpor and haze of exhaustion which was slowly creeping over. Not much sleep the previous night, nor in the previous months, spent in (as ever) fashionably late learning and revising for the final exams of my fourth year of studies, overlapped with preparations of my premature departure. The last retake had taken place no earlier than the previous week, as well as the agreement for the flat I would live in from August on. The forthcoming breakdown, or at least period of intense recovering, could be sensed arriving soon. Isn't that called holidays? I forgot, over the months, over the years...
Even with the slight hindsight provided by the train rest, I could hardly pinpoint the elusive feeling -- it was floating somewhere between around the most unexceptional (after all, I had braced and prepared for moving to Finland ever since its definitive decision, which dates back to a brilliant morning before Helsinki's Pride parade almost exactly one year ago; in contrast being in France in the meantime seemed a lengthy hallucination) within the most extraordinary. Would I be tonight where I ever wanted to return? Was I really expatriating at my young age? It seemed very much so... And I was unexpectedly calm in light of this.

I did not see much of Lille, for the last time I would be there after three years living in the city; hardly looked up to the Art Deco vaulting of the train station hall while ploughing through the crowd with my impossibly heavy luggage. It had few chances to be taken as such at the drop-off counter, even fewer to pass through without a fee... That was the only concern, if really something to be concerned about, to subsist and gradually subside as I slumbered on the rumble seat again. A good friend would be there when getting off the train, so reaching the counter wouldn't be too much of a problem -- well, rather a shared nightmare, as I proved to be in front of out-of-order lifts, towering stairways, hostile turnstiles (at least when you try to get on the shuttle without a ticket) and missing directions in the immense maze of the stations and terminals system of Roissy. We made it straight to the right check-in area, and for the second time providence stroke: monster suitcase has dropped pounds on the way and the scale showed a quite reasonable twenty-four kilogrammes (the whole luggage amounting to a little over forty) which did not raise any remark by the counter hostess. We tightened the straps and left French delicacies and wines bottles to the care of the company, which hopefully would be good enough for everything to arrive in one piece. Two hours left for chilling and check-in; we settled in the airport café where I had a glass of chilled, aromatic Chardonnay, discussed about Finland, Iceland, life plans; then said goodbye, and stepped on the moving walkway sucking passengers in their strange tubes up to the gates.

The final episode in luggage horror (at least before taking off) was still to come: security check. Extracting liquid bags and laptop was not too complicated, putting them back in was quite a different story... and boarding had started already. Much to my horror, this suitcase's zip proved even weaker than the other's and literally cracked open as I tried hastily to close it... in spite of it, it was closed enough to roll to the gate, running with my unstrapped stilettos. It would have been useful to know which gate among the ten it was before running. But I was well in time, as usual, got on board, greeted the hostesses with a shy Hei, took place besides the window, and... that was it. Soon we rocketed into the sky, as I was gradually lapsing into drowsiness. Hyvästi Ranska. Jäähyväiset...

A little bit of history

The most complete account of my life-changing exchange year in Finland and my nail-biting internship episodes in Helsinki is available at A Year in Tampere.

Hei. I'm Julie.

I was born in Dunkerque, France. My mother's family originates from a small town nearby, precisely the one in which infamous local pride movie, Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis, was shot. I grew up playing around in my garden, fantasizing it was a lost forest full of spirits and magical plants, and I was some sort of lonely ranger taking care of all this little world.
I grew older. The two immense poplar trees, which had cast for decades their long shadow on the neighbourhood, and provided a fresh shelter against summer heat, were cut down. I wasn't so much outside anymore, anyway.
I got infatuated in politics, sciences, IT, philosophy, all sorts of things, preferably the ones I could dismantle to understand how they would work. I got an upper secondary education degree in Economics and Social Sciences with German language as speciality and passed the entrance exam to Lille's Institut d'Etudes Politiques, with European studies in mind. The subject was pleasant, and I could very much see myself entering the Collège d'Europe someday after my Master's degree, then ending up in a good and safe position in the Union's administration, keeping a substantial time off for music, which I had grown very keen on through Internet to counter my relative isolation on that matter -- not of the most common kind indeed, industrial, neofolk, experimental on the whole.
A friend had passed me Tenhi's Maaäet and I loved it first time I heard it. I was intrigued, and wondering: Are those people really like that, up there? What's in the songs, it does really exist? The turnaround regarding my destination choice for the compulsory international mobility year was operated at the last minute. No Germany. I was resolute to investigate by my own whether the North was really like in a Tenhi song, otherworldly. The University of Tampere was very conveniently offering first-class European studies, so there was not much to ponder about. It would be Finland.

Then, things got complicated.

I arrived in August for Summer school and was left speechless with amazement at the freedom we were suddenly granted, the possibilities, the new horizons opened by intercultural encounters, and above all, at how simple, common-sense and effective administration (in a broad sense) could be. Let alone the light. The light was one of a kind, and the sky the most immense I had ever seen. It felt like standing at the very top of the world, head into the universe.
I knew I was Finnish upon visiting the Song and Silence exhibition at Ateneum, during my first visit of Helsinki for the occasion of the Night of the Arts. There were boards explaining how Finnish symbolist painters were perceiving and representing music. The way I ever did, and I thought I was alone. Suddenly a whole country could understand.
A month after, I ended up in the most improbable cottage concert afterparty on one of the islands off Oulu, at the top of the Gulf of Bothnia, only foreigner along with a Czech friend amongst a small crowd of warm and fantastic Finnish people. The train ride back to Southern Finland was so far the best hours of my life. Perhaps I wasn't Finnish, but for sure the ones I met there would suffice to bind me to any land.
I watched sunsets and dawns, first snow, frozen lakes; enjoyed sauna every single time, saw the trees and recalled the garden and the poplars. I wrote all nights, at moonlight and candlelight, to describe the indescribable, or at least approach it. Dived into music meanwhile. It was just like in a Tenhi song, and so much, unimaginably more than that. I drew extremely near to abandon my studies in so faraway, so incongruous France.
There was no way I would leave before I was compelled to. After immense efforts I found a summer internship in Helsinki. Not anyone's pointless occupation: journalist trainee at Reuters. Four months there and the sunniest days ahead.

Then, things became impossible to tell. But no stay away from there would ever be possible.

I moved back to France for my fourth compulsory year of studies, had no rest until my school's administration accepted to let me go for the final fifth year on a special agreement I tricked them into, wrapped up the whole European studies thing in a rather inelegant and hasty manner, packed my suitcases and flew straight back to where I belong.

But, speaking of suitcases...