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.
