House-hunting: the kid in the candy store

You know you’re getting serious about putting down roots when you start house-hunting. And I mean house-hunting. Not apartment-hunting, not townhouse-hunting. After scrolling in earnest these past few weeks through pages and pages of possibilities, I realized that at the back of my mind, I was looking at apartments dutifully but not happily. I even went to an ‘esittely’, open house, and saw one very nice apartment. Key word: nice. After a conversation with a colleague from Australia, I realized that we shared an unexamined prejudice: where we come from, you don’t live in apartments when you’re a grown-up if you’ve had any success in life. You don’t go looking for an apartment in your 50s unless your health is failing or you’re in bankruptcy. There’s a faint smell (metaphorical, of course) around considering apartments, something like that whiff of sadness and defeat you get when you walk into a second-hand store in the US (Goodwill in particular). And since this is my one and only life, I get to decide where I want to live, and it’s not going to be in an apartment – no matter how sensible that seems to Finns who point to such issues as maintenance, snow removal, traveling, summer cottages, proximity to downtown, and a score of other advantages. Oh, and the cost.

So this preference is irrational here in Finland (and in the US for that matter – how many people own single-family dwellings in Manhattan, for example?), but I have a right to have it, and once I accepted my irrational preference, I started to really enjoy looking for a new home. And I got very lucky, because my Australian colleague doesn’t mind looking at homes, and in fact seems to savor it (he was an electrician before he became an English professor, and he spent years renovating his own beautiful home), and he has come with me on most of these visits. We play good cop/bad cop as I explore and feel like a kid in a candy store, salivating at built-in corner cupboards, swooning over pönttöuunit (tell me if you have a better translation than “brick oven covered with sheet metal”) and admiring honey-colored wood floors, and he asks the hard questions: Why is it being sold? Why hasn’t it sold yet? Don’t you think it’s overpriced? How recently was the plumbing updated? How much insulation in the walls? etc. In fact, he’s been looking at homes for a long time, and some of the realtors recognize him (and tremble, I think).

You learn so much about a culture when you explore the nitty-gritty of how its members live. All of the houses have saunas, because that is a necessity, but many of them have only one toilet (“You Americans really love your bathrooms, don’t you?”). I’ve seen some houses with beautiful wood paneling and floors, but one realtor said “Finns don’t like all that wood”; some wood floors are covered up with linoleum. Many homes, maybe even most, have a potato/cold storage cellar under a trap door in the kitchen, with treacherous stairs leading straight down. How do you maneuver that when you’re in your 70s? (Oh. That’s why some of these houses are being sold. And thank goodness I have male friends who were willing to climb down into them for me, because you probably shouldn’t do it in a skirt.) Some are set on land that is part of the sale; others are on land that the city leases to you for decades, and you pay around one thousand Euros in rent per year, depending on the size of the lot. You have to shell out a rather high sales tax (4%, I think), but low property tax (laughably low – 100 Euros annually for one home I looked at). 

And clearly, Finns take up less living space than Americans. My house in Oregon is a whopping 232 square meters. It’s a pretty good sized house in the US but nothing extravagant. I just searched for homes that size for sale in this area, and there were only 5 that size or larger, the only one in my price range located way out in the country. Have you ever been to IKEA and seen the ‘small-space’ home display? It feels a bit like that looking at homes in Finland.

And then there are the snow/cold issues. Triple panes are a must. If the home has wood siding, it needs to start a certain distance off the ground or the snow will rot it during the slow spring melt. All homes have a snow ladder so you can knock heavy drifts off the roof. Heating is a real deal-maker or deal-breaker – oil heating is the most expensive, a heat pump highly coveted, and all kinds of alternatives in between exist as well (district heating, electric with radiators, etc.). Most of the homes have a wood closet for stacking your firewood conveniently so you don’t need to lose any digits or your nose running out for more wood when it’s 30 below.

I haven’t even mentioned the ‘kuntotarkastuslausunto’. This is the inspection report, and you can imagine the kind of vocabulary words you might find there. I am so lucky to have Finnish friends willing to go through this document for me; I was steered clear of a house I fell in love with but whose past was too checkered to risk a long-term relationship.

So many choices. Maybe this is the thing I find most difficult about looking for a house: it forces me to examine what I want vs what I need, and it brings up difficult-to-answer questions, some of them very uncomfortable: How much longer will I live in Joensuu? What will I do when I retire? How long will I be able to ride a bike around? Will I always live alone? Will I go to the US every summer? How often will my children come to visit? Will I need to take grandchildren into account?

Maybe I should get an apartment after all.

But to get serious again: figuring out what I want – never mind what I need – has never been easy for me. But I take solace from a wise Finnish friend who said I should simply wait until my mind and my heart come to an agreement about which house to pick. At this point it feels like I’m wrestling with a blanket that’s too short. I just have to figure out which corner to tug at and which part of my body to leave cold. Then I can settle back and savor my candy.

Opening ceremonies

Every year, the University of Eastern Finland launches the academic year officially with a day of opening ceremonies. These are both religious and secular, and as far as I can tell, they are poorly attended. I saw none of my colleagues at the church event (as one of them told me, “I don’t believe in God, so I’m not going”), and only one of my colleagues in English attended the secular one. I’ve been considering my motivation for spending that precious time at the beginning of the year on something so ‘non-productive’. I suppose I’m finding ways to tie myself to this still pretty alien institution.

To be clear: there are other ‘ceremonies’, or perhaps ‘rituals’ would be a better word, focused on students. Groups of ‘fuksit’ [FOOK-seet], or ‘freshmen’, are wandering the campus behind older students dressed in large pants. These pants are covered with patches commemorating various milestones or memberships. (I have one with a beer mug on it which apparently was a souvenir from a pub crawl in Savonlinna. No, I didn’t attend; I bought the patch.) These mentors arrange activities and parties for the new students. I went to one last night, the only teacher there. At first I thought I had misunderstood the invitation. As it turns out, no, it’s just that the other teachers were busy elsewhere. Maybe my priorities are in the wrong place; I think it’s more that my mindset is still in the US university system, where making your program attractive to students (for example, by getting to know them in informal settings) is part of your job. In any case, it seemed to be a fun event, though the ‘fuksit’ were given a rather daunting task: introduce yourself to older students/teachers and then ask them if they are hiding one of the special objects on their scavenger hunt list. I had the screwdriver, and had made up a story about being the only one strong enough to pull it out of a frozen turkey, but only one student benefited from my genius. I guess I am just that intimidating.

To go back to the official ‘avajaiset’. A Lutheran coming from Oregon, where I am used to people not really knowing what a Lutheran is, or people who have an active antipathy towards organized Christianity, I felt – what, excitement? a- or be-musement? -- at the prospect of entering my church for a university event. It felt like a clash of worlds. And yet, there were university officials offering prayers for the new students, for colleagues, for stamina and purpose and joy and all those other things you need to get through an academic year. The sermon had to do with gratitude (though, admittedly, I didn’t catch all of it); the hymns were hauntingly beautiful, and the choral offerings were by Sibelius. I admired the paintings when I was distracted from the words – amazing renderings of sprigs from local trees and bushes.

After a break for lunch, the opening ceremonies continued with a formal processional by the PhDs into the auditorium, where we were seated in the second and third rows. Here I have to digress for a moment. I got my PhD from Yale, but when I did, I was already working in Oregon at my first 'real' job and was too poor to go back to the East Coast for my graduation ceremony. How I would have loved to have my dissertation advisor, George Schoolfield, hood me and shake my hand in the presence of loving family members. (As it was, my mother said, “You mean Robert Redford was your commencement speaker and you didn’t go?? I missed my chance to meet him!” I think she was more upset about that than about not seeing me get my doctoral hood.) In addition, Yale did not subscribe to the practice of a dissertation defense. Here in the Nordic countries, the doctoral defense is a huge deal. It’s almost as elaborate as a wedding. After the academic portion, you can have a sit-down meal or a ball or who knows what. I had no defense, and, when I got the letter saying I had passed and was now Doctor Saranpa, I was stirring a pot of spaghetti sauce. I still remember wiping my hands off to open the envelope.

All that digression as a way to explain why I now, at every opportunity, participate willingly in academic rituals. It’s a way to take back a little piece of the acknowledgement of this accomplishment in my life that I didn’t allow myself back then.

So then, all of the faculty PhDs (or rather, all who show up) walk in solemnly, dressed in black, with their doctoral hats held in their left hand. I find the doctoral hat tradition rather amusing. You have a tailor come to measure you for your hat and you spend a lot of money on it. But you NEVER WEAR IT. Seriously! I think maybe there are one or two rare occasions when you might be called upon to put this expensive garment on your head. But not at this one. Apparently there is also a doctoral sword, and a ceremony in which you sharpen this doctoral sword. But it’s a blunt sword and it never cuts anything, at least not intentionally. I love ritual – don’t you?

The rector gives a speech which is partially delivered in English as well, then there is a student speech, and finally the awarding of the Teacher of the Year award. This year, it was a very well-deserving teacher of Finnish language, and she gave a smart and amusing acceptance speech. That’s pretty much it. There are also musical numbers, and of course I have to say something about them. The first group was a vocal/string/percussion ensemble (including electric guitar and bass) that performed three songs in English which seemed to have little to do with the theme of ‘avajaiset’. (One of them had to do with not being able to sleep at night, so maybe I’m wrong there.) The second group was the university’s choir. Their songs were lovely if the delivery was a little rough. (My son would shudder if he could have heard how many separate ‘t’s you could hear at the ends of words.) The whole ceremony was topped off with a rousing rendition of the Karelian fight song, or at least that’s what it sounded like. I will have to learn this song. My colleague in English says you could tell which of the chorus members were not from Karelia, because they were pretending to sing it – they don’t know the words yet.

Speaking of things I’ll have to learn, I’ll say a few words about the Finnish language and my struggle with it. I’m feeling a bit encouraged lately. I’m understanding more, I’m daring more, and I’ve signed up for a Finnish class. I’m going to meet this beast head-on. Or at least that's how it feels now at the opening of the school year. Maybe I'll visualize myself with that doctoral sword, slicing at menacingly long words and frightening dipthongs.

Round Two

All of a sudden, I’m back in Finland. Precipitously. Or at least that’s what it feels like. This Oregonian summer was a blur of runs to my storage space, showing my house to prospective tenants after the anticipated sale fell through, making thousands of small and large decisions about whether to save/recycle/sell/give away/ship, interspersed with precious get-togethers with family and friends. The last week in particular required Herculean amounts of strength, stamina, patience, humor and trust – as well as a good dose of humility – as a cadre of fantastic friends helped with the final push. My home became an empty house as they assisted me in moving out 20 years’ worth of memories, junk, cleaning products, curios, acquisitions and surprising finds (whose RayBan sunglasses did I unearth at the bottom of a toy box?). At 10:30 the night before I left, I returned the U-Haul, and at 6:30 the next morning I was on the road to the airport. Here are the names of my summer heroes in no particular order: Karen, Laura, David, Denise, Jarl, Ken, Pam, Thomas, Kate, Diane, Alden, Susan, Maija and Will, Marj, Eunice, Tom, Jody, Cynthia, JJ, Edene and Kristina. (If for some reason I left you off, let me know. It was a tough summer, and my memory is fallable, but you deserve recognition.)

Awesome friends at storage unit

Though this endeavor may sound grim, there were plenty of lighter moments, at times inspirational ones. Having friends sitting on my couch in the back of a cargo van tickled my funny bone as did the rather naughty things they were discussing (and as this is a G-rated blog, I won’t reveal them). Giving away thousands of dollars in possessions was an exercise in release and resulted in happy, if somewhat bemused, strangers. Watching the Perseid meteor shower as Will, Maija and Xana discussed overtones and how to produce them -- and then proceeded to give examples -- was delightful. And there was some humor – after the pain receded – in the fact that I made pretty good money on my garage sale only to have a speeding ticket slapped on me the next day, which meant that my net profit was $10. My trip to visit my mother and half of my siblings involved 24 hours total on Greyhound buses hearing stories that made me feel lucky, and I won the family Hearts game. Perhaps bittersweetest of all was having my elderly cat and Methuselan dog sleep in my room every night, and I didn’t even mind Soc meowing in my face at 4 a.m. After all, I was used to waking up regularly in the wee hours because of the midnight sun in Joensuu.

I flew back to Finland via Calgary, my first trip to Canada ever. We descended over Banff National Park, and it was the most thrillingly dramatic landscape I have ever seen from a plane. One hour after landing in Helsinki, my son arrived from Oslo, and he was able to spend 10 days with me – I don’t think we’ve gotten to spend that much time together since he graduated from college. My friends Nina and Make picked us up and treated us like royalty, feeding us a delicious dinner (salmon!), treating us to single-malt whiskey (and there’s no way I could have remembered the name but it started with Laogh…) and providing us with comfy places to sleep. 

Erik and Make mid-toast

Erik and I got the train to Joensuu the next day and managed to buy groceries and make beds before collapsing. Erik did a lot of relaxing and I went back to work. One evening we went to a Finnish housewarming party and then to an English pub quiz -- our team came in third out of seven but won for best name: Pre-pub-essence. We traveled to Ostrobothnia on the weekend, where we were able to clear some brush and trees at the ancestral cabin. The train trip takes seven hours each way, most of which is Internet-less and restaurant-car-less, but Erik was a good sport. Our relatives brought out photos of Erik when he was three years old, watering the strawberries and the potatoes. We put flowers on the graves of my great-grandfather's father and mother, and we did some sight-seeing. Erik learned a few new Finnish words, including 'lampimampi' (warmer) and 'uutuus' (novelty/new thing).

We had an interesting excursion to the heart of Finnish Karelia, Ilomantsi, where we were treated to beautiful views, a good dinner, some questionable wines (made from berries) and kantele music. While on this trip, Erik remarked on the slow pace of everything done in Finland, and I could see his point. I appreciate the slowness, I realize. It's one reason my life is healthier here.

And now I am beat and, to be honest, somewhat down. It’s probably a combination of too much traveling (I just returned from a two-day seminar in Savonlinna where I heard and spoke Finnish almost exclusively), small frustrations involving money and paperwork, letdown after Erik’s visit and – oh, yeah – once again moving to a time zone 10 hours away and completely changing my daily routine. Generally when I remind myself of things to be thankful for, it improves my mood. So I’ll end this blog by listing today’s gratitude list:

-- I have a son who enjoys my company enough that he stayed with me for 10 days.

-- I have enough good friends that I was able to completely move out of my house this summer.

-- My daughter has moved to a new city to start graduate school, and she is doing well there.

-- My little sister, who was just released from jail, may actually be on her way to rehab. Prayers, fingers crossed!

-- I get to live in Finland, and Finland is starting to feel like home.

It's all good

What do you think about the phrase, “it’s all good”? I kind of like it. I like it a lot more than, for example, “no problem”, or “for reals”. I like the idea that even when life isn’t quite going your way, you can handle it, or find the silver lining, or put up with what’s going on temporarily.

I feel that way about this year, literally: it’s all been good. This year? Yes – it’s been a year already. (OK, cheating a little: it’s been an academic year, 10 months.) In less than 24 hours, I’ll lock up my apartment for the summer and head for the US. It’s unreal (for reals) that the year is over, and I wouldn’t believe it if I hadn’t turned in grades today and had end-of-year coffee with three of my colleagues yesterday. One Swede (who, unlike me, did not feel this year was “all good”, and so she’s going back to her homeland), one Finn, one Canadian and I had a relaxing couple of hours in the “Taitokortteli”, the charming wooden house full of shops where local craftspersons sell their creations and where anyone can learn to weave. I had a very Finnish-looking piece of cake to celebrate this year: mostly crust and cream with red currants, strawberries and cherries on top.

This year has been something like that cake: it was all good. Even the month of February (probably the red currants) had its positive aspects (like the fact that it was a short month). But with the constant sunlight (even between 11 p.m. and 3 a.m. it never quite gets dark) and the warm temperatures, it’s hard to remember what February felt like. I got all my classes taught and received positive evaluations (even some enthusiastic ones!); I spent two weeks teaching in other countries; I gave two conference papers. So I survived the year and did not make my boss regret hiring me. A victory!

 I suppose it’s traditional to do a retrospective of a year like this by talking about what you’ve learned. So here are my top ten, in no particular order.

1. Home really is where the heart is. So trite, so true. My little apartment here has all of a sudden started feeling like home. I’m looking forward to coming back here. I’m not sure when this transformation took place. Perhaps when I started booking my tickets to go back to the US?

2. The US is not the center of the world. I have intentionally not read US newspapers while I’ve been here. (OK, I cheat once in a while.) And although the US is a huge and powerful country, not everyone pays attention to everything happening there. 

3. “Ever after” may be one of the most harmful phrases ever created. I think I’ve been at my most anxious when I’ve been wondering if I’ll stay here “ever after” when I might actually not have been anxious at all if I had stayed in the moment and noticed how high the quality of life is here. The air is pristine. (Well, not today – a building went up in flames north of town and it smelled like burning tires for a while.) The water is delicious. I can walk through the woods anytime I like. My stress level is low. I don’t own a car. I could go on and on.

4. National stereotypes must be taken with a grain of salt. I’ve known this for a long time, but this year has really brought it home. Finns come in all flavors. I know very reserved ones, very boisterous and loud ones, kind ones, ones who love the US, ones who never want to set foot there, conservatives and liberals and the apolitical. There are cultural norms but these aren’t related to personality. If I weren’t so tired, I’d embroider on this subject for a while. A later blog post, surely.

5. I’m too darned hard on myself. Make me come back and read this later on, please? I feel like the laziest person in the world when I am relaxing on my red velvet couch unless I'm working on at least two projects at the same time. I need to schedule down time more than anyone I know. Next year I must make sure this happens. Please remind me.

6. I need contact with nature to thrive. I never noticed it as clearly as this year while living in a second-floor apartment with no balcony.

7. Connections with other people are the most precious thing we have, and the Internet can keep those connections going in very nurturing ways. What would I have done this year without Skype, Facebook, e-mail and blogging? The recent revelations about the NSA’s surveillance activities cast a pall on this, of course…

8. I can do this. And, in fact, I did it.

9.  Finnish is still the most difficult language I’ve ever tried to learn. But I don’t have to chalk it off as a lost cause. It’s getting better, slowly.

10. It’s not hopeless till you’ve lost your sense of humor, and I don’t think I’ve lost mine yet.

I may continue this blog over the summer or return in the fall. In any case, thank you for joining me on this strange journey. I think I’ll go have a Karjalan piirakka now, since it may be a while till my next one.

Two weeks of "substitute teaching": priceless

Last Tuesday I returned from teaching for two weeks at universities that have Erasmus Exchange agreements with my institution: Masaryk University in Brno (Czech Republic) and Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń (Poland). My university encourages this sort of exchange for “mobility” reasons, and in fact receives some kind of financial incentive for each teacher who participates. It would be an understatement to say that I am glad I decided to take part, though the timing could have been a little better. Taking off three days after a 10-day trip to the US gave me little time to recover, barely enough time to do laundry and repack my bags. In addition, I missed spring completely. I’m back in Joensuu and, to give you an example, it was 78 degrees F at 8 p.m. yesterday. When did this transformation take place? Next year I want to be here to actually see the transition between winter and summer.

My first night away, I stayed with my friends Nina and Make near Helsinki. That is always a bonus when I  travel via Helsinki: their generous, relaxed hospitality. This time they get even more kudos because they were leaving the same morning for Copenhagen to see Bruce Springsteen and take their son Frans to Legoland. I’m so used to traveling alone; it was good to share the morning nerves and rush, get in line together, wave goodbye at our gates. I got myself to the right train station in Vienna (what a different visit than two years ago, when I got to spend four luxurious weeks there!) and was in Brno a couple hours later.

I’d never been to the Czech Republic before and wish I had done more “homework” before arriving (although, come to think of it, when would I have done that exactly?). Brno is a beautiful little city with the usual Eastern European graffiti and shabby buildings, but the center is mostly lovely. I think people are so focused on getting to Prague that they don’t bother about Brno, but I thoroughly enjoyed spending a week there. The weather was good, the food was delicious and scandalously cheap (I treated myself to a fancy lunch at the city’s most expensive restaurant: $24; most days a complete meal was $4-6). The city is walkable, so my feet got me everywhere I wanted or needed to go. My hostel was next door to St. Jacob’s Cathedral, and I went to Sunday mass; even understanding no Czech, I was able to follow the service pretty well. Beneath the cathedral is Europe’s second-largest ossuary. The bones of 50,000 people – it’s a bit difficult to wrap your mind around that one.

My colleagues for the week were very friendly, though nobody had much time for socializing. One woman took me on a two-hour walk to get my bearings on that first Sunday, and another one invited me to lunch. Jarmila is in her 60s so she remembers the “bad old times” very well. She worked as an interpreter/secretary for an English company, so she was put on the list of collaborators and had some nasty experiences, including an interrogation. She got tears in her eyes when talking about how happy she was that times had changed, mostly because she didn’t have to watch her children and grandchildren suffer through them. Others I talked to weren’t happy about the current government – they felt that the current president was a “good old boy” who was more interested in lining his own pockets than creating better conditions for the average Czech citizen.

I taught three courses while there. One was on teaching English in Finland. It turns out that the Czech and Polish languages are similar to Finnish because they have cases and no articles. So their struggles with the English language are similar. A second course was simply a lecture on how I came to teach translation and English in Finland – not really teaching, but providing a native speaker for students to interpret into Czech or Slovak. The third course felt really out of my league – assessment in foreign-language classes in the US. But apparently they went well enough, all three. Whew!

I was ready to head for Dresden on Friday, but Jarmila convinced me to spend a few hours in Prague on my way there. I have very mixed feelings about that visit. Prague is every bit as exciting, beautiful, fascinating, overwhelming, etc. as everyone says. I would like to spend a month there accompanied by several history books and some lessons in Czech. I walked over the Charles Bridge, went to the Kafka Museum, had apple strudel in a sidewalk cafe on the Old Market, visited the beautiful synagogue, strolled the medieval streets, bought a delightful little painting of Kafka’s “Goldenes Gässchen”. But by the time I got back to the train station to continue on to Dresden, I had a blazing headache, probably from too much sun and too little water. I dragged my suitcase onto the train and soldiered on to Dresden, hailed a taxi and got to my Airbnb apartment. Fortunately my host was not very talkative and understood that I needed a rest. I crawled into bed fully clothed at 8 p.m. and didn’t get up until 12 hours later.

So what a first-world predicament: I went to Prague and what I remember most is my headache. This story definitely needs rewriting.

Dresden: for seven years I taught German with a textbook that introduced Dresden and Frankfurt at the same time. I had never actually been to Dresden but from the textbook I knew some of the “must-see” sights: the Zwinger, the Frauenkirche (destroyed during WWII and recently reopened), the Semperoper. During my stay, the weather was cool and rainy, so the “Florence of the Elbe” definitely had a grayish cast. However, since during my entire visit I had the firebombing of February 1945 in the back of my mind, the weather seemed appropriate.

I have an inexplicable affinity for Eastern Germany. I felt comfortable in Wittenberg, Leipzig and Halle; I loved strolling around Eastern Berlin; and I felt very at home in Dresden. Several strangers spoke to me – did I seem so comfortable that they assumed I lived there? Mostly I wanted to walk around and get to know the city, but I did have one thing on my cultural agenda: to view the Neue Meister (new masters) in the Albertinum. It was a thrill to see some of the paintings I know through a unit I teach on Degenerate Art: works by Dix and Kirschner, for example. And, of course, I loved the paintings by Monet, Munch, Nolde and Picasso. After leaving the museum, I simply wandered around without a plan, and that was the best thing I could have possibly done. I stumbled across two wonderful soloists (music students?) performing with a keyboardist under a bridge. They sang “Panis Angelicus” and two other pieces, and it was indescribably beautiful, echoing all through the passageway. After that, I happened upon a church (Hofkirche), went inside and strolled casually towards one side chapel. I stopped in awe. There was an unusual sculpture that seemed more incredible the more I read about it. 

I’ll translate what the plaque said in German:

The Memorial Chapel

Originally, this chapel was dedicated to the Bohemian saint Johann Nepomuk.

Since 1976, it has served to memorialize the victims of the bomb attack on Dresden on February 13, 1945, and the victims of all unjust violence.

With his image of the Mother of Sorrows, Mary, who holds her Son in her lap, the Dresden sculptor Friedrich Press created an imposing memorial of suffering counted in the millions.

In her hands, Mary is holding rubble from the war, which she is fashioning into a crown of thorns. The gaping wound in Jesus’ heart bears witness to His love, which absolves us from our guilt, despite war and hatred, and offers us reconciliation.

The separate altar in the middle of the floor represents Dresden as it burns.

Friedrich Press created both works of art from Meissen porcelain.

I couldn’t tear myself away from this sculpture until a janitor said, laconically, “Church closing”, jingling his keys. How lucky I was that I got in to see this wonder right before closing time.

The next day I took the train to Berlin and then Torun. Here I want to say something about being in a country where you do not speak the language and where almost nobody speaks your own language. If you’re a language person, your decoder doesn’t shut off. You keep trying to bring order out of chaos, and it simply doesn’t work – but that doesn’t mean, in your subconscious, that you lose hope that order will eventually win. It makes you very, very tired. I spent the entire train trip, in a compartment with seven other women speaking Polish, believing I could make sense of what they were saying. Imagine my relief when Ewa, my colleague, met me at the train and greeted me in beautiful British English. She took me to my hotel and then out for coffee. I had never heard of Torun before; I was amazed at how lovely it was. The medieval city wall is nearly intact. The building where Copernicus was born is still standing and still in excellent shape. How did I not know this place existed? The view of the medieval town on the banks of the lovely Vistula River was so impressive.

Farmhouse in Torun's outdoor museum

Now I’m going to sound like I’m complaining, but it’s more like good-natured ribbing. I think I’m going to call Poland the country where everything almost works. In fact, most things did work while I was there, but in some cases it took a while to get there. The hotel room was at first glance imposing, luxurious, but the bed was dreadful (it felt like a box spring with no cushion), the shower fixture couldn’t spray in the proper direction without my holding it in place, and the Internet wouldn’t work. Fortunately, most of the women who worked at the front desk knew some English, so the computer issue was worked out the next morning. I didn’t have to teach until Wednesday and Thursday (three sessions of “Pitfalls of Legal English”, right up my alley), so I spent a couple of days either working alone in my room or wandering around alone (Ewa lives about 40 minutes outside of town and has a small child). Ewa and I took each other out for several lunches and coffees, and that is, of course, one of my favorite things to do – explore the food of another culture. What do they consider a meal? What is dessert? I have to admit that I did not become a fan of Polish food during my stay.

The kind ladies at the front desk must have known that, and wanted to make one last good impression, so the breakfast they packed for me the day I left would have fed the entire population of Torun, or so it seemed. Four large sandwiches, two containers of deviled eggs, one container of radishes and lettuce, one bottle of iced tea, three cookies and a container of cheese. They even threw in a piece of ‘espresso chocolate’, probably to compensate for the lack of coffee. I was touched and horrified. I ended up leaving most of the food at the Poznan train station, hoping a person in need would find it. There’s definitely poverty in Poland, and I witnessed it on the train. One friendly woman who helped me find the right train in Torun was on her way to the hospital in Poznan. As we parted in Poznan she moved really close to me and tried to tell me in broken English that she needed money. I didn’t have much Polish money left so I gave her a two-zloty piece and made the universal gesture for “out of money”. She didn’t look convinced. The idea that all Americans are wealthy is probably still present in Poland.

The nightmare of getting from the train station in Berlin out to the airport convinced me to stay put and get some work done rather than tourist around. In the evening I arrived in Zurich for my R&R weekend. I met up with Erik around midnight and he took me to a “Hoffest” – an annual party that the tech people (i.e. those involved with scenery and staging) put on for the rest of the employees of the Zurich Opera. It was a hoot. Lots of dancing to an eclectic array of music, strobe lights, lots of friendly people who seemed pleased to meet “Erik’s mom”. I went home around 2 a.m. and then met up with Erik for a casual breakfast the next morning. We had an early sushi birthday dinner (how long has it been since I’ve had sushi??) and then went to a recital by Joyce DiDonato – Erik had been able to get us tickets. What a lovely evening! She sang pieces about Venice, and I am no expert on vocal arts, but it felt like she was a different personality with each one. Her pianist had finger cramps during one number and they handled it so smoothly and naturally that everyone was rooting for him rather than feeling upset at the break in the show. Her last encore was “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”, and in light of the deadly tornados in Oklahoma, it was a moving tribute. I had the delightful experience of seeing her hugging Erik and hearing, “You can’t be old enough to be Erik’s mother!”

The next morning I wandered around Zurich on my own although the weather was windy, rainy and cold at eight degrees Celsius (46 F). Springtime?? I saw a whole bevy of swans (yes, I looked it up) on Lake Zurich who didn’t seem to mind the cold or rain at all. Eventually I met up with Erik for a rather American breakfast, except the hash browns were “rösti”. We wandered around the shops in the Viaduct, and afterwards I let him go home for his pre-show preparations.

Seeing him in Don Giovanni was amazing. I don’t think I will ever get used to having children who are professional musicians, and this is a good thing. Every performance is precious and new and exciting. This time Erik was Masetto, dressed as an Amish man. The production was fascinating and controversial – most of the recitative was removed. At the end, the singers were applauded warmly, but the conductor and artistic direction were booed. And those who didn’t agree with the booers started to shout “bravo” even louder. After the show there was a premiere party where the head guy, Andreas Homoki, praised everyone and their efforts, in particular Peter Mattei who had sung the demanding lead role while very sick. He is from Sweden, so of course Erik introduced us, and we had a chat in Swedish. He’s from Luleå, and you have to think it’s even less likely that a town far in the north of Sweden would produce an opera singer than a small town in Oregon…but I suppose you never know.

Yes, this blog is very long. I hope you don’t feel compelled to read it all in one sitting, if at all.

The next morning I flew to Vienna, parked my bags, and took a bus in to see a little of the sights. Very little. Knowing Vienna, I decided to aim for one sight and one meal. I headed for the Leopold Museum, remembering that I had seen works there by an artist I didn’t want to forget, and had gone ahead and forgotten anyway. As it turns out, it must have been another museum, or a temporary exhibit that was no longer there. But I did “discover” Theodor von Hörmann, who may or may not have been the one I was looking for. I also saw more degenerate artists, a lot of Schiele and Klimt of course, but the real gem of the visit was in the basement, where Manfred Bockelmann’s “Drawing against Oblivion” is on display until September. It is a room full of drawings based on photographs of children who were incarcerated, and mostly murdered, in concentration camps. Some of their heads are shaved, some are in prison garb. All are named, and that is part of the idea: that these children not simply fade into oblivion, but be brought into our field of vision.
http://www.leopoldmuseum.org/en/exhibitions/51/manfred-bockelmann

The trip back to Finland was almost magical. Seeing it from the air, with the sun still up at 10 in the evening, with the lakes glinting golden orange, made my heart leap a little to think that this beautiful land is now my home. Nina and Make had been on yet another trip to see Bruce, and their flight came in about a half hour before mine, so they kindly waited for my flight and we all went home in a taxi. The train trip to Joensuu the next day was surreal – where did all the greenery, summer temperatures, happy smiles and cheerful chatter come from? Back at my apartment building, I saw the man I usually see walking his dog who has never acknowledged my existence. I held the door open for him and he smiled at me and greeted me. Is this part of that arctic hysteria I’ve heard about?