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...