Frozen fairytale

No more bags or boxes to arrive, and no full-fledged fall on the ice (yet), so things are looking up! Work has been extremely hectic and this was an 80+ hour week, unfortunately, but our client meeting on Friday went well and the team is happy…I think. A funny and well-known trait of the Finns is their relatively stoic expressions, if you can call them “expressions” at all. It hadn’t come up as an issue until this week when I realized that I really did not know if my managers were pleased with our progress, and I did not have any clue how I could find this out. In the US, you may not get the straight story (“Yeah, I think this looks good, but….”) but we are all trained to read expressions, tones, inflections, eye movement, etc, to get the real message. With the Finns, there are minimal changes in facial expressions, no verbal inflections to indicate feeling, and tones have been replaced with double K’s, dots over A’s, and impossible stretches of consonants. The consultants on my case team have tried to help a bit, translating a few phrases from "Finnish" to “American.” “Quite OK” means “Fantastic!” *Silence* means “Good.” Lots of comments in a client presentation means, “I don’t believe you.” Now I’m even more confused!

The work week was tough because of the hours and the deadlines but it allowed me to get to know my team better, and to feel a bit better connected, which I think is important for team cohesiveness. During one of our late work nights I asked my consultants what their Finnish names meant and one of them told me that his name, Vesa, meant “offspring.” I said, “Wow! Your parents were very creative!” He looked at me very confused and I said, “’Offspring’ in English means ‘child.’ Is that what you meant?” He said, “Yes, a child from a tree. You know, a little plant?” I said, “A baby tree?” He replied, “Yes! A baby tree!” I had been calling him Mr. V (to which he always said, “Yes, Mrs. A?) but after this I laughed and told him, “Ok, you can be Mr. V or Baby Tree. What do you prefer?” He said, “Baby Tree!” and, with that, became my favorite person in Helsinki. (See? I’m really very easy to please.)

I was finally able to go to the bank on Friday to set up a bank account and get some local currency. I had my passport, my work permit, and a letter from the office stating that I was gainfully employed and received a salary. I thought this was a little strange that the bank should need this but didn’t ask questions. When I got to the bank, I explained that I had just moved to Helsinki and needed a regular savings account and an ATM card. The woman had me fill out some paperwork which seemed very standard until it asked how many times per month I would be receiving payments, and in what amount and currency, and for a description of what the payments were for and who would be sending them. I asked her about this saying I expected to use this account for my expense reimbursements (she didn’t know these words in English and after I tried a few different tries at explaining it to her, she just gave up and decided expense reimbursements must be ok) and I didn’t really know how much they would be or how consistent because my projects and travel could change quite often. She was not quite able to comprehend this and said, “You must have consistent payments and we must know for how much, when, and from whom.” I argued with her for a bit and reiterated that all I wanted was a standard savings account, that I did not need a loan so my salary should not matter (I am getting paid in the US which confused her even more), that I did not know how much each payment would be, and I did not understand why all this information was needed in the first place. She told me that they had to ensure that “no dirty money” went through their banks so had to know in advance of any payments coming in and all the details surrounding them. I somehow doubt that if someone were moving around dirty money that it would come to Finland but who knows. At any rate, I was fairly annoyed at having to give all these details of what I would normally consider nobody’s business but mine but decided that it wasn’t worth the moral stand about privacy rights and please just give me an ATM card already!

I thought we had worked everything out when she then moved on to statements and would I like a bank statement? I told her that I would prefer to just check my statement online, no paper statement necessary, and asked, “You do have online banking, correct?” She said, “Yes, we have online banking but you are not allowed to see your account information online until we have several weeks of consistent payments which are not dirty money.” I said, “So, you’re telling me that I cannot check on the details of my account, which holds my money, until you feel comfortable that the payments are not dirty money.” She said, “Yes, but you can pay for a paper statement until you get permission for online viewing.” Exasperated, I replied, “You won’t allow me online access to my account and I have to pay for paper statements?” She said, “Yes, I’m sorry. That is how we do it. You can go to the ATM though and get one of those little papers from the machine with your account balance on it until you get online permissions.” Yes, also known as receipts. I am familiar. Oy.

After the 80 hour work week and the dirty money paranoia at the bank, my weekend finally began and a friend from BCG’s LA office, who is living in Paris this year, flew in to Helsinki so that we could then go together to Tallinn, Estonia that night. Earlier in the week, when people at work had asked if I had plans for the weekend and I said that I was planning on going to Tallinn on the ferry they just sort of smirked. I asked them why the funny reaction and they consistently asked me if I was ready for the rowdy Finns who are notorious for boarding the ferries to Tallinn drunk and just remaining in that state for the rest of the weekend. (Alcohol is controlled by the government in Finland so it is heavily taxed and, subsequently, very expensive. Tallinn is cheaper overall and, in comparison to the government-controlled alcohol prices in Finland, worth the ferry ticket just to buy booze.) I had heard that Tallinn could be quite the party town with tourists but figured I would take my earplugs and everything would be fine.

We had a 10pm ferry reservation and as my friend Heidi and I left a BCG going away party for the boat, somebody said, “Are you ready for the ice breaking?” We replied in unison, “Ice breaking?! How exciting!!” At least I’m not the only one who is easily entertained. We got to the terminal and walked nearly a kilometer through unheated elevated walkways to get to the ferry. I only note that they are unheated because this past week was unusually cold for Helsinki, getting close to -20°C (-4°F) a few times. The ferry itself was a small version of a cruise ship…tacky, alcohol-centric, and smoky, but was not at all rowdy. While the ferries to Tallinn in the summer might be filled with intoxicated Finns ready to party, the 10pm ferry to Tallinn in January seemed to be packed with exhausted, silent Estonian workers on their way home. We arrived in Tallinn two hours later, walked another kilometer or so in the cold walkways, and took a short cab ride to the hotel. Incidentally, we got had by the cab driver who charged us double the rate which we only found out when he wrote us the receipt which reflected what we should have paid. Ugh. Thankfully, prices in Estonia are much, much better than the crazy high prices of the Nordic countries so this did not hurt too badly. The Estonian currency is the Estonian Kroon (said more like “crown”), denoted as EEK (which I found, and still find, hilarious – I said “EEK!” every time I got a bill and Heidi was a good sport and didn’t even slap me).

Tallinn, and Estonia as a country, has had a very troubled past, having been taken over and occupied by the Danes, the Swedes, the Germans, the Soviets, a “Fraternity of Blackheads” (which Heidi and I never could really figure out, beyond thinking that they had been given a really unfortunate name), and at least one other country which no longer exists. In some cases, these countries would lose and gain control of Estonia multiple times. Most recently, Estonia was part of the USSR and only gained independence in 1991, after having survived many years of occupation, oppression, and what I would consider to be crimes against humanity. The Estonians are, subsequently, very proud of their heritage and have been working hard to bring back their own culture, language, and traditions since regaining their independence, the former having been stripped from them largely by the Soviets since World War II. It’s been less than 20 years since they came from behind the Iron Curtain, so today’s generation is the first in Estonia which will have grown up in peace, free from the oppression of the Soviet regime.

While Tallinn is now quite a modern city, the most famous and historic part of the city is called, appropriately, Old Town. Old Town was built over several centuries but most of what it is famous for in terms of a medieval stone wall protecting the city including 26 of the once 35 towers (originally there was also a class moat), and quaint storybook stone homes, were built in the 13th century. Interestingly (and sadly), the most damage done to the Old Town in the last eight hundred years was in WWII by the Soviets. (If I remember correctly from one of the museums, the Soviets destroyed 10% of Old Town and 30% of all “living space” in Tallinn in the WWII bombings and raids.) The Old town is tiny, maybe only a few kilometers square, and is as beautiful as I had heard and just exactly what you’d expect from a medieval fairytale town. What I had not expected, and is apparently not all that the normal, was the unbelievable cold this weekend. The “high,” never reached more than about 0°F (the term “high” for this is misleading, if not a bit mean) and got down to nearly -25°F. If you haven’t been in that kind of cold before my advice to you is DON’T. There was hardly anyone on the streets let alone raucous partiers but who wants to party when it is 30-50°F below freezing? I had remembered long underwear just as Heidi and I were leaving my apartment on Friday but the cab was coming and I couldn’t find it so I figured I’d be ok and left without anything extra (keep in mind I had multiple layers of sweaters, heavy duty boots, a ski parka, heavy gloves, multiple hats, wool socks, etc). You may be thinking, “Idiot.” Well, I agree! That turned out to be a huge mistake and, believe me, I paid for it all weekend!

Heidi and I did a good job of braving the cold but it was really, really quite severe. I had my camera in my parka pocket all day and would only remove it for quick shots, and it kept freezing up because of the cold. Heidi and I oscillated between not being able to feel our fingers and toes and very painfully feeling them when we’d step in a souvenir shop to warm up for a few minutes. At about -10°F my eyes start watering and my lip gloss freezes to my lips. I’m ok to scrap the mascara for the winter but I really just can’t give up lip gloss (you just can’t change the fiber of your being) so I was walking around town with my lips pressed together to avoid frozen lip gloss and tears running down my cheeks. It didn’t really matter though because no one else in their right mind was outside to see me anyway. I pulled my hand from my glove at one point and noticed that my knuckles were bleeding…my hands were so cold and dry from the weather that they had cracked and started bleeding inside my ski gloves. It was totally ridiculous. I saw a little girl, maybe 2 years old, walking with her parents this morning. She started crying and just sat down on the stone street, looking totally broken, until her dad picked her up. I was thinking, “It’s ok, honey! I’d be crying too if I thought I would have to survive a minimum of 18 years of this climate before I could escape!” Poor thing! (To be fair, she seemed quite happy again when her dad put her on his shoulders and carried her so maybe she was just throwing a fit and maybe I’m just a wuss!) The words that kept running through my head all weekend were “inhospitable to human life.” To add insult to injury, we kept hearing from all the Estonians that this was not at all normal for them. Usually it is -5°C, or 23°F, at this time. Sadly, those temperatures seem almost tropical to me at this point! I have also heard many times over the past few weeks that this winter is “unusually harsh” by Helsinki standards. (It is thought to be a result of global warming which has caused more extreme highs and lows around the globe.) As if the change from California to the North Pole wasn’t great enough, we had to add a little bit of “harsh” on top!

Heidi and I were troopers though. We walked all over Old Town all day and took the tram to Kadriorg Palace, where the Estonian president lived before the Soviets took over in 1940. We went to an Estonian restaurant for dinner which, you can see from the pictures, was quite overdone with respect to costumes and medieval décor, but actually had excellent food. It was what you would expect from a city with a wall and, at one time, a moat; we were given what our waitress called “weapons” to eat our very hearty meals of fish, forest mushrooms, barley, and cinnamon beer. They also gave us blankets to wrap around ourselves at the dinner table, despite the place being heated. Again, I’m telling you that -25°F is no joke! The food was great though and we even had some live Estonian “folk” music. It was a very welcome and semi-warm break from the brutality that was walking outside all day.

Estonia has been a favorite place of the Finns for many years (Helsinki and Tallinn are only 83 km from one another) and the sauna tradition has been passed on, at the very least to our hotel. Heidi and I took advantage of the hotel sauna and booked it for after dinner. We had been human popsicles all day and were looking forward to having a sauna to round out the night and, hopefully, finally feel warm again. When we got back to the hotel from dinner the outside temperature was -31°C (-25°F). We then got into a sauna which was 62°C (144°F) – a 170°F swing! The sauna was lovely for a while but I’m not sure it was a great idea after we’d just eaten a huge Estonian meal. Heidi and I both had to lie down afterwards…and drink a lot of water!

Unfortunately, the weekend ended all too quickly and Heidi left on a flight back to France and I got back on the ferry to Finland this afternoon. While we hadn’t been able to see any “ice breaking” on our trip over because of the sheer darkness, it was quite a sight today. The ferries run multiple times a day, and there are multiple ferry companies, so the ferry paths are broken up and remain fairly “free” with respect to still being open water. The crazy thing is that the rest of the sea is frozen over; you can actually go ice skating from Helsinki and out to sea up to about 3 km before it is considered dangerous. I got some great pictures of the ferry “path” in the ice on my trip back today, and also of the frozen Baltic Sea. If you did not believe me about the cold before you see the pictures, you will afterwards. I actually had to go out on the deck of the ferry multiple times to get all the pictures because after being out for about 3 minutes my hands would begin to freeze and I was afraid I’d drop my camera into the frozen ocean. Unbelievable.

So, while it was only a quick trip, I had several learnings from this weekend:

1. Tallinn is beautiful, unique, and really does look like an enchanting, medieval fairytale place…and it’s a place I will visit again in warmer weather.
2. Never, EVER, leave your house in Helsinki without long underwear. (I will now be keeping some in my purse, just in case.)
3. Don’t eat before going to the sauna.
4. Buy a hybrid and recycle! You never know when you’ll move to the Arctic and pay for your carbon footprint.
5. I like my fairytales at 20°C (about 70°F). ;-)

Babel

Week one has flown by, largely due to the fact that I got staffed on a quite hectic case about 3 hours into my first day in the office. It’s meant some late nights and a lot of catching up but it’s been a great way to get to know the office and to make Helsinki feel a bit more like home. (Going to work makes the move feel much more permanent!)

Although my case has kept me very busy, I have been able to get a bit better settled in my new home. The BCG office here helped me get someone in to make some repairs to the apartment, I finally have new sheets after 3 hours of looking (turns out they only use duvets here so finding a sheet for the mattress was quite a mission), and I even rigged up my bathroom so that I can blow dry my hair there instead of in the living room with no mirror. You may remember there was no outlet in the bathroom from my last post…there actually is an outlet but it’s on the other side of a long skinny bathroom and the washer / dryer is plugged into it. Not having many other options, I got an extension cord and strung it along the wall, wound it through the nearby towel rack so it would stay in place, and now I just have to decide what to plug in on any given day and then crawl back in the corner and switch the cords. It’s not ideal but neither is going outside with a wet head in 10°F! So, things are coming along and I’m learning to adjust a bit.

I also used my washer and dryer for the first time this week and, despite thinking that washing your clothes is neither a cultural experience nor a topic of interest about which to write, I can tell you that you may think differently after spending 45 minutes translating enough instructions from the manual to limp by! I was quite proud of myself once the first load of towels was done! Besides many funny looking and completely unintelligible pictures on the machines, there was nothing but a long list of buttons, timers, and lights to guide me. Of course, the instruction manual is written in five languages (Finnish, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, and German – very helpful!) which I didn’t notice for about the first 20 minutes during which I was looking up Norwegian words with a Finnish translator. This was not very successful as you might imagine and I was getting increasingly frustrated. I finally figured out my mistake and spent the next while translating what each button name / description from Finnish to English. My favorite was the dryer setting that translated to “wrangling dry.” I can tell you that I was very close to wrangling something at the point at which I got to this translation so, I still don’t know what it means, but it gave me a good laugh. Won’t be drying my clothes on that one though….

I have quickly gotten over my shyness in the stores as well now that I know that I will only search in vain for an English translation, and that everyone standing around me can speak with me in English just fine if asked. I was looking to buy ground beef to make spaghetti Bolognese earlier this week and couldn’t quite figure out which beef was leanest. I stared at the packages for a while and just looked for numbers and percentages but there were too many and I decided to ask someone for help. There was a man standing there next to me so I looked at him and said, “Hi! Can I ask you a quick question?” He looked at me, paused, and said very deliberately, “Yes.” I pointed to the package and said, “Does this mean that this meat has 5% fat content?” He looked at me, paused, looked at the package, paused, looked back at me, paused, and said very deliberately, “Yes.” Then he paused again, turned around, and walked away. Welcome to Finnish culture, my friends! I had heard that the Finns were quiet and only said what was necessary and no more but WOW. (And for those of you who are thinking, “How different can this language really be anyway? Did she really need to ask?” Well, the word in Finnish for fat content is rasvapitoisuus. I rest my case. Finnish is not an easy, or intuitive, language!)

Besides figuring out how to use the washer / dryer units, my other major accomplishment this week was finding a gym. I was going stir crazy being inside for a few days with no good way to work out. You would think that running outside would be an option, and I actually came prepared to do that but in addition to being painfully cold there is a decent amount of snow here right now and there is no snow removal; it’s more like snow “push around.” They basically just move it around and pack it down so now, because it has been so consistently cold and there has been no opportunity for melting, there is a packed hard layer of very slick snow and ice most places which is covered by a dirty, brown snow layer that has been pushed around for a few weeks. The city puts dirt out to make it less slick but I haven’t seen any salt or anything to actually melt what is on the sidewalks (and dirt doesn’t do anything but make the snow dirty!). After a few acrobatic acts on the ice this week, I have thought about paying for the salt needed for my ~1 mile walk each day just so I don’t bust my teeth out on the way to work. If I have a gap in my smile next time you see me you will know what happened! At any rate, I realized outside running wasn’t happening for a few months so I was in desperate need of a treadmill!

On the recommendation of some people at work, I went to what they called the “fancy pants” gym a few blocks down the road. I guess “fancy pants” means “expensive with strange, old equipment” because that was my main takeaway when I visited. The gym is actually fine although it is very expensive and, I have to say, I’ve seen a lot of different indoor cycling bikes over the years and the ones in this gym seem to be the prototype of the model of the first generation of indoor cycling bikes…ever. And, they are bright robin egg blue. (Color doesn’t impact their performance of course but still, who made that decision?!) I took a look at the schedule of group fitness classes and there are four categories translated for me as, 1) Easy and efficient, 2) Choreographically-based, 3) Light and Easy, and 4) Body & Mind. Spin is in category 1, “Easy and Efficient.” Yikes, what kind of gym advertises easy classes? This is not from the Andrea school of fitness as many of you know.

Despite the funny bikes and the promise of easy, light, and mediocre, I tried out a spinning class there this week… instructed in all Finnish. It’s actually quite amazing how easy it is to tune someone out (on a microphone, no less!) when you can’t understand a single word, or really differentiate a single sound. The class used mostly American music…with a twist. We started with a classical instrumental rendition of Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” before moving on to a techno version of Lynyrd Skynyrd and then a Green Day-style 80’s love song remake. It was nice to be back on a bike, even a baby blue one, and I enjoyed all the surprises of the playlist (and ignoring the instructor). I don’t know if I’ll be able to teach here yet but I did email the woman in charge of staffing the classes at my new gym. One of my favorite spin participants in SF tried to prepare me for teaching here before I left, sending me this Finnish sentence to learn, “Tämä ei ole taukoa!” which translates to, “This is NOT a break!”, one of the phrases I am well known for in my classes at home. I hope I get the chance to use it here!

No crying this week (thank goodness!) and only one real disaster. I wrote last week about the fun I had getting my baggage from my flights. This week, I received my four shipped boxes and had to get them home. The first three arrived late last week so were waiting for me in the office when I arrived. I’m not sure what exactly goes on with international air freight which doesn’t happen with domestic air freight but the boxes I sent were brand new and taped within an inch of their lives, and the boxes I received looked like they had been through battle. The corners were beat in, tape coming off, some rips in the sides, etc. But hey, what can you do? You have to take what you get at that point! I called a cab and then had to get these boxes (~50lbs each) down four floors. I was leaving the office fairly late and no one was really around to help me (and I wasn’t willing to introduce myself to the strangers who were there and immediately ask them to carry big boxes for me) so I had to do this myself. The boxes were beat up to begin with but I think they might have gotten a bit more so after I was done with them. No exaggeration, there are six doors from the outside of my office building to inside the actual office and each of them has to be unlocked and/or opened (no push-through). This meant I had to carry a 50lb box (in a dress and heels no less – stupid!) to each door, set the box down, unlock and/or open the door, somehow prop or hold it open as I picked the box back up and moved through, and then repeat this process for 5 doors. This was just for one box. By the last one, I was kind of kicking the thing across the floor between a couple doors, and the “setting down” became “dropping.”

After missing the first taxi because it was taking me so long to get everything downstairs, I finally got all the boxes down and the next taxi driver helped me get them into his van. By some miracle, the driver was able to understand my street name as pronounced by me and we took off. I knew it would be a bit of a pain again once I got to my building but I was in the homestretch so was feeling good. First, I couldn’t remember exactly where to stop for my building (give me a break – it was pitch black and snowing so I couldn’t see much!) so we went 50 yards too far but only after the driver had unloaded one of the boxes did I realize my mistake. The driver very graciously put the box back in the van and turned around. We got back to my building and he started unloading boxes and putting them inside the gate. Well, when he had initially loaded them, I had noticed that he had sort of flopped one of the boxes into the van on it’s top, and that the tape was looking very loose. I figured I could tell him when we got to that box and we could tip it back over carefully and it would be fine. I could have done this but I had wrongly assumed that the driver would speak English so when I started telling him this he neither understood, nor did he slow down, and he grabbed the box and pulled it up straight up at which point the tape gave way and the entire contents of the box went everywhere….25 pairs of shoes and some random kitchen tools, to be more precise (it seemed reasonable to pack these things together at the time). I was holding the gate open and I think I just stared blankly. The driver, well, he hardly reacted at all. He just grabbed the empty box, turned it over right-side up, kind of reshaped the thing, and put it on top of the other boxes inside the gate. He then proceeded to make about 12 trips to and from the van, carrying about 4 shoes and one spatula at a time. I just shook my head and said, “Thank you!” and “I’m sorry!” every time he dropped off a load. Poor guy! What makes it worse is that I didn’t (and still don’t) have a single Euro to my name so couldn’t even try to tip him. They don’t tip here for anything but I felt that this constituted a bit of an extreme case. I don’t think he could understand anything I said to him because when he left I shouted, “Thank you!” again from the gate and he shouted back, “Thank you!” which cannot have been what he was thinking. Now I know someone out there is thinking that this was poetic justice for the girl who found it necessary to bring 25 pairs of shoes to Finland (more actually, these were just in that one box!). All I can ask for is a little bit of compassion. Is it not punishment enough that I won’t be able to wear most of them until May, and then only until August?

I’m nearly over the jet lag (it is said that you need a day for every hour time zone difference – I’m 10 hours ahead of Pacific Time here and am finishing day 8 in Helsinki) and am feeling more comfortable by the day in my new city. I miss the sun and being able to be outside without 30 lbs of gear on but am really enjoying the newness of everything here. There’s a lot of inconvenience but also a lot of very interesting things to experience and see. Next weekend I’m heading to Tallinn, Estonia (across the Gulf of Finland, part of the Baltic Sea, from Helsinki) with a friend from LA who is living in Paris this year. I’m very excited and hope to have many new pictures to share then. It is supposed to be a very beautiful old castle-y looking city and I’m looking forward to the first of many fun trips I hope to take this year. Asti, halaukset helsinkiläinen!

Just me, myself, and my 400lbs of baggage...

I left San Francisco last Wednesday, January 6th, with surprisingly little apprehension besides a bit of concern about how United would handle (and charge me for) my 5 enormous and overweight checked bags. I wasn’t thinking about how I would handle the transition, just how I’d handle the bags myself when I arrived in Helsinki. Turns out this was an unconscious and strategic diversion because, I can tell you that three days later now, it was just the calm before the storm …

I arrived in Helsinki’s Vantaa airport on the evening of January 7th after 20 hours of travel, excited but exhausted. I channeled my very dear Gramps as I looked out the window while landing using one of his famous phrases to describe what I was seeing, “This place is darker than the inside of a dog." Dark, yes, but covered with snow and quite well lit considering it was darker than dark at 5:40pm. For those of you who don’t know, Finland is home to Santa’s actual address and the well lit streets and highways – there’s so much darkness for such a big chunk of the year that the Finns obviously know how to get lighting right – amidst thousands of evergreens and tons of snow seemed to make it a very appropriate choice for Santa. It was quite beautiful, actually, and I was excited to meet my new home city.

I had made it out of my apartment with all my bags, completed all of my to-do’s before leaving the states, said goodbye to (most of) those I had wanted to see before I left, and lasted through 13 hours of flights and a 5 hour layover – this was the homestretch! All I had to do was get my bags through Customs and to the taxi driver on the other side and I’d be pretty much home free. Well, considering I literally had at least 350lbs of luggage to pick up and move through Customs, this was going to be quite a task. I’ve had many people ask me over the years why I would work out so much and with so much intensity, was I training for an event or something? My reply was always that no, I wasn’t training for an event, I just really love moving and being active. It turns out I was wrong all this time – I was clearly training for this very moment and the event of getting all of my bags singlehandedly out the door of Helsinki's airport. I was already exhausted, and was already carrying probably 60-70lbs with me on the plane, so I knew this was going to be a tough one. I grabbed a luggage cart and stood up against the wall in baggage claim to avoid the chaotic mass that was everyone else trying to get their bags. I had forgotten that Europeans are used to less space and, more specifically, less personal space. It was not the first time since I first landed in Frankfurt that I felt crowded and wanted people to back-off (I want more personal space than the typical American even so I’m a bit extreme here). I decided to wait until some of them had cleared out before attempting to get my bags but after 30 minutes of waiting and now watching my bags circle around a few times, I couldn’t take it anymore and had to push my way through…5 times, picking up a larger bag than the previous each time I went back to the belt (the smallest being a 55lb duffle bag). Not only did I have the most bags, I had the 5 largest bags of the entire flight and by about trip 3 to the baggage belt, people had noticed. The good part was that they started parting ways to make room for me and my bags; the bad part was they all stopped talking and started staring….oy.

Next came the task of loading as many bags as I could on the cart. I did this, under the constant stares of most of the people in the area, and managed to muscle 4 of the bags on the cart. In the process I ripped off a fingernail lifting up one of the 75lb’ers and starting bleeding. What a way to begin! I then had to hold my carryon in my left hand while also using it to pull another big bag, and then push the 300lb cart with only my right hand. It was a slow, precarious progression to Customs and all I was thinking was, “I can’t believe I have to unload and reload these bags again.” Turns out that as strict as Finland is about shipped items going through Customs (they do not accept “personal effects” so every shipment must be classified as a commodity to be sold and is then taxed at 22% of the declared value – yikes!...I had to classify some used clothing as “textiles” and pay the tax before I realized what was going on and started declaring low values for Customs), they don’t care at all if you’re dragging it in yourself. So, to make a long story short, there were no Customs and while I was prepared for another baggage battle, I only had to go about 40 yards before I saw a taxi driver holding an “Ostby” sign. When he said, “I can help you with your bags.” I almost kissed him.

The driver took me to the Helsinki BCG office where we met the Office Coordinator, Marika, who has been helping me with logistics and preparations for the past few months. Once we got my bags into my apartment (5 minute drive from the office), Marika offered to take me to the grocery store both so I would know where the closest one was and also so I wouldn’t wake up in the morning with nothing to eat. The grocery store is only about 4 blocks away which is nothing….unless you’ve been up for 30 hours and it is 0°F. We finally make it to the store and Marika proceeds to give me a very detailed tour of the place down to how to choose eggs (a “0” at the front of the stamped number means the chickens are “free” and are fed only “bio-dynamic” feed; a “1” means the chickens are free but don’t have special feed, a “2” means that they care caged but can still move around, and “3” means they cannot really move – Marika recommended I get the “0’s”) and milk (the red one is the “fatty” one, the blue one is the “medium fat” one, the light blue is the “no taste – half milk, half water” one, and the one with stars on it was milked at nighttime when there is “something extra in the milk that is good for you because the cows are calmer when milked at night” (seems a little counterintuitive to me but who knows?) - I went with the US standard, “no taste” skim). We also stopped to look at the pickled fish section - mostly pickled halibut and herring, I think - I haven't tried it yet and am trying to keep an open mind but, I have to say, that stuff looked horrible! Marika told me this is a summer dish though so I have a few months to get used to the idea. Marika was absolutely wonderful to help me out and, considering that everything in the supermarket is written in 3 – 4 languages but very rarely is one of them English, I was very grateful to have her with me for the first trip! Even after this tour and great amount of help from Marika it took me 30 minutes to find the parmesan a couple days later. My efficiency has officially bottomed out.

Marika sent me off to walk my four blocks home and finally went home herself (she had stayed late to meet me and then was sweet enough to take me to the grocery store – so nice!). I proceeded to somehow get lost in below zero weather even though I only had 4 blocks to go. It took me about 20 minutes to get my act together at which point I was cold, even more tired, and really sick of carrying my groceries. (I have had the thought on both trips to the supermarket that I should probably start eating less…just so I don’t have to carry it home from the store!) This was the point at which I reached my low. I was exhausted, overwhelmed, and, suddenly, felt really isolated and alone and proceeded to start crying. I got it together and started unpacking some things in the bathroom and couldn’t find a power outlet…and started crying again (How am I supposed to blow dry my hair?! I can’t exactly let it air dry in this weather! Don’t even get me started on my power toothbrush…). Then I found the sheets for the bed but they had stains all over them and didn’t match. More crying. Then I started noticing how dirty the apartment was – inside of the fridge was gross, dust everywhere, lots of trash left for me to take out, etc. It was nothing that couldn’t be remedied but I just couldn’t quite deal with life at this point. Harder crying. Then I tried to make myself some toast before bed and had to look inside the fridge again (yuck!), there was no bread knife and the others were totally dull, there was no toaster, and the bread I had just bought smelled funny. Louder crying. I finally had to sit down, load up some Skype credits, and call my mom for some phone therapy. God bless Skype and my parents! They collectively kept me off the edge that first night. (Side note – I called my aunt Karen yesterday to say hello and fill her in and after the crying story she said, “Well, you may have gotten yourself in over your head this time!” and then proceeded to laugh. Thanks a lot, Fonda!)

I calmed down after an hour on the phone, during which my parents couldn’t help but laugh as I told them all the ridiculous things that had made me so upset, and then proceeded to sleep for the next 12 hours. (I’m blaming sheer exhaustion for at least a bit of my freak out!)

Day One was sunny (I woke up at 12:30pm) and reached a balmy high of 1°F and Day Two (today) was -6°F at 1pm – yikes! Thankfully, I came well-prepared from the states and had plenty of coats, hats, gloves, and boots (although I will be adding long underwear to my daily wardrobe arsenal tomorrow – jeans just don’t cut it out here in these temperatures!). The arctic air doesn’t seem to be bothering the Finns much but I, on the other hand, just try to make it from building to building. One nice surprise has been that while the sunlight is short-lived, it is bright. We had beautiful blue skies today. Granted, it’s too cold to enjoy them for long but the fact that the sky was bright and the sun was shining was huge for me. And things are looking up on the weather front– it is supposed to be in the 20’s (°F) on Monday and in the 60’s by June.

So, my first few days have been hectic and stressful but that is to be expected. I have found a Catholic church (no idea if the services are ever in English but will try it out), have a gym and a yoga studio in mind to hit tomorrow, and am planning to head to the Marimekko headquarters to replace the stained sheets very soon. Apartment was cleaned (the cleaners which were sent ASAP at my very adamant request finally asked, “Can we go now?” after I had followed them around and made them re-clean several items / areas) and I’ve got new towels (the ones in the apartment were also old and stained) and pillows so I’m feeling much better. It’s amazing what the little things can do for you. I’m still working on beating jet lag, which I’m notoriously bad at handling, and start work in the Helsinki office this Monday. The Finns are quiet per their reputation, and not outwardly friendly on the street, but any that I’ve actually spoken to have been extraordinarily nice, helpful, and down to earth.

A friend asked me yesterday if I liked it here and I replied, “Not yet.” Not yet is fair…but I’m getting there!