Finland just won’t let go

6 March 2009


Try to step out of a country, and it will ensure that you will be constantly reminded of it nonetheless, if not give you the impression you never actually succeeded in leaving the place. That is exactly what happened to me when I left Finland for Greece just a few days ago now. Leaving Vantaa airport on a flight bound for Berlin Tuesday 3rd March, I naturally assumed that seeing those snow-showered Finnish flags in front of the international terminal building would be the last Finnish sight I were to see for a long time to come. Well, except for the loud sisu-powered redneck a few seats in front of me on the Air Berlin flight then of course. When he disappeared out of sight after having given me an approving welcome-to-the-club nod after realising we both bore a Finnish lion around our necks, I really thought the last string had been cut loose.

Once with my good friend Simon in Berlin, his well-germanised but originally Finnish girlfriend Anne gladly offers to keep working on those Finnish skills of mine regardless of where we are and brings the number of conversations in this – too all the native Germans around us – untraceable language up to manifold. Moreover, she excitedly informs me that she had agreed to meet up with few other Finnish girls in town the next day to show them a little of what their new home has to offer. Great news, for I get to show off with that pretty basic Finnish that I speak once more before the whole things will slide back down to zero-literacy level.


Me and Anne in front of Brandenburger Tor


Fleeing southward once more in a last attempt to finally break loose from my life in Finland, it seems like the more I try and force myself to cancel out preliminary home-sickness, the more I'm being reminded of how much I will miss it. Take the train that connects Athens airport with the city metro system for instance: my guidebook tells me that this latest addition to the Athens transport system is Finnish-built. And surely, the coach doors close with the very same beeping sound as the one that you hear on the modern generation of trains in Finland. Train doors also close within the first 10 seconds of opening them, which ironically enough suits both boreal and Mediterranean climates, keeping the heat in and out respectively.


Simon I, Simon II and Anne

Athens itself allows little space for being overly nostalgic. With 6 million inhabitants and a total lack of spatial planning in how it grew into the giant it currently is, the hecticness of the place requires full-time concentration on what's going on around you. Even up on the Acropolis hill, peace and quiet are hard to find. The steep slopes of this impressive rock formation act like a giant amphitheatre, funnelling up every sound from ambulance sirens to proclaimed prayers. Somewhere among the hundreds of culture enthusiasts, I pick up a string of Finnish words and feels butterflies awaken in my stomach. I constrain myself and decide not to approach them but rather quietly enjoy having encountered at least one familiar thing in this giant hub. Strangely enough, I'd meet the same two people again in the Athens' Ancient Agora 2 hours later, certainly pure coincidence.

Oh well, maybe I just seek those signs. Or would there really be some sort of 'don't-even-think-about-forgetting-me mechanism' out there that has many ways of expressing itself? The patterns of the national flags of Finland and Greece are strikingly similar after all.