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). ;-)