Monday, November 28, 2005
You know that scene in the Wizard of Oz where they are picking apples from the tree and all of a sudden the trees start throwing apples at Dorothy and the bunch? Well that's what my ride home from work was just like, and I didn't do nothing to no trees. As I mentioned before, it's been snowing like crazy here the past few days, which is a good thing since it means that the rain stops. But sometime today the snow stopped coming and the weather got a little bit warmer, inching just above the freezing point and into the melting point. Nothing is worse than this. All the snow on the ground turns to slush, except for the very bottom icy part that sends bicycle tires skidding in every direction. The snow on the trees melts and comes pelting down in huge gobs. It really feels like the trees are throwing snowballs at you - well, at me. And then tonight it will freeze and all the slush will ice over and it will be worse tomorrow than today. I admit this, I won't miss the ride to work when we leave here. In the summer, yes. November, no way.
The snow finally arrived and it hasn't stopped for 2 days. It's hard to believe that it hasn't really hit yet. It's almost December and it's still quite warm and until Friday night, there was no snow on the ground. It makes such a difference. Sure, it's a lot harder to ride a bike through the snow, and it means that the snow trucks will wake us up at 6am everyday, but during the day, the white snow just makes everything seem happier. Darkness at 2:30 is just too gloomy to bear so many days in a row. The snow changes all that, it makes everything softer, easier, brighter. I admit that today on the ride to work the snow was so wet that it seeped in through my jacket and made my neck really cold, but all in all it's worth it.
OK, I am officially procrastinating. I need to be working on my essay for school. I am, but not at this moment. Ok, I'll do it, Sheesh.
OK, I am officially procrastinating. I need to be working on my essay for school. I am, but not at this moment. Ok, I'll do it, Sheesh.
Monday, November 21, 2005
My last entry to the J-town Journal:
In June of 2003 I was working on Broadway for one of the largest theatre owners in the world. My commute from Brooklyn to Times Square was 45 minutes long on a good day and 90 minutes long on some of the worst days. The trains were packed with more people per square centimetre than Jokela on a Friday night and smelled just as bad. I would spend most of the subway ride thinking about ways in which I would tell off my bosses who would regularly abuse the support staff. The theatre world is filled with primadonnas and other short-fused celebrity types and abuse was constant.
The streets were a regular stampede of pissed off pedestrians (yours truly included) and I would regularly vent on the tourists and other people who simply did not know how to get around the crowded sidewalks. There was always a tension in the air in the city, some good and some bad. During my time in New York I had to flee Manhattan on foot twice – September 11th and the East Coast blackout.
So the idea that I would soon be living in Joensuu, Finland was a thought of utter absurdity and yet a few months later absurdity became reality. I remember looking at maps of the world and showing people just where in the hell J-town was and I remember the guffaws of disbelief that the arctic location triggered. I remember telling my mother that my wife and I were picking up and moving out. And I remember the many tear-filled conversations that followed. I remember living on an air mattress while all of our stuff was somewhere over the Atlantic and still not realizing what was just about to happen.
When I first arrived by plane, after the 16 hours of travel, I looked out from the window of the airplane and thought, “Where the hell is the town? All I see are forests and lakes.” I admit that not much has changed from that initial impression, but the beauty is in the details. The next day I got myself a bicycle and set about exploring this place before it got too cold for my Yankee bones. I pedalled to the racetrack and to the lakes and through the forests. I looked around and saw more nature in one glance than I had in my many years as a city-dweller. The next day my ass was killing me from riding a bike for the first time in a decade.
I think that the culture shock was so dramatic that it never had time to seep in – at least in the first year. I remember going to the library and checking the names of those on the computer waiting list, hoping to see a name I could at least pronounce, but those were few and far between. I remember going to Hesburger and being proud that I could say “Kerrosateria, Kiitos” and I remember being afraid of the question that came next. Of course now I know that she was asking me what I wanted to drink, but back then it could have been anything. I remember trying to convince my local Siwa lady that what I needed was Olive Oil, but that conversation went nowhere. I remember going to the grocery store looking for a half-pound of ground beef and realizing I had no idea how into convert to grams. I remember that I had to memorize the temperature conversion so that I could tell just how fricking cold it was. ((C*9)/5+32) = F. And I still don’t know how much a decilitre is and I cook almost every day.
I remember the first time I felt truly at home in J-town. We had guests in from New York and they were like a couple of deer in headlights. When I had finally seen people who were more out of place than me, I finally felt at home.
I remember the first friend I made here in J-town. I came to lunch at Science Park and a man asked me if I liked basketball and if I would like to join him at the Kataja game that night. After that I became a regular at all the games and found myself with a friend, and playing basketball with a group of guys that accepted me as one of the group even though we hardly spoke a word to one another. Until many months and many beers later, one of the other guys finally spoke to me about his life and wouldn’t shut the hell up.
I’ve made many more friends since then and for the life of me, I can’t really think of one person I’ve met that I haven’t liked. I can think of dozens of people that I haven’t met whom I don’t like, but I’m sure if I stopped yelling at them to get on the right side of the bike path and got to know them, that we would soon become friends.
This is the last entry in the J-town journal for me. Next month I’m moving to the big, bad city of Helsinki, but in my heart I’ll always be Joensuulainen. It was my Finnish boot camp after all.
In June of 2003 I was working on Broadway for one of the largest theatre owners in the world. My commute from Brooklyn to Times Square was 45 minutes long on a good day and 90 minutes long on some of the worst days. The trains were packed with more people per square centimetre than Jokela on a Friday night and smelled just as bad. I would spend most of the subway ride thinking about ways in which I would tell off my bosses who would regularly abuse the support staff. The theatre world is filled with primadonnas and other short-fused celebrity types and abuse was constant.
The streets were a regular stampede of pissed off pedestrians (yours truly included) and I would regularly vent on the tourists and other people who simply did not know how to get around the crowded sidewalks. There was always a tension in the air in the city, some good and some bad. During my time in New York I had to flee Manhattan on foot twice – September 11th and the East Coast blackout.
So the idea that I would soon be living in Joensuu, Finland was a thought of utter absurdity and yet a few months later absurdity became reality. I remember looking at maps of the world and showing people just where in the hell J-town was and I remember the guffaws of disbelief that the arctic location triggered. I remember telling my mother that my wife and I were picking up and moving out. And I remember the many tear-filled conversations that followed. I remember living on an air mattress while all of our stuff was somewhere over the Atlantic and still not realizing what was just about to happen.
When I first arrived by plane, after the 16 hours of travel, I looked out from the window of the airplane and thought, “Where the hell is the town? All I see are forests and lakes.” I admit that not much has changed from that initial impression, but the beauty is in the details. The next day I got myself a bicycle and set about exploring this place before it got too cold for my Yankee bones. I pedalled to the racetrack and to the lakes and through the forests. I looked around and saw more nature in one glance than I had in my many years as a city-dweller. The next day my ass was killing me from riding a bike for the first time in a decade.
I think that the culture shock was so dramatic that it never had time to seep in – at least in the first year. I remember going to the library and checking the names of those on the computer waiting list, hoping to see a name I could at least pronounce, but those were few and far between. I remember going to Hesburger and being proud that I could say “Kerrosateria, Kiitos” and I remember being afraid of the question that came next. Of course now I know that she was asking me what I wanted to drink, but back then it could have been anything. I remember trying to convince my local Siwa lady that what I needed was Olive Oil, but that conversation went nowhere. I remember going to the grocery store looking for a half-pound of ground beef and realizing I had no idea how into convert to grams. I remember that I had to memorize the temperature conversion so that I could tell just how fricking cold it was. ((C*9)/5+32) = F. And I still don’t know how much a decilitre is and I cook almost every day.
I remember the first time I felt truly at home in J-town. We had guests in from New York and they were like a couple of deer in headlights. When I had finally seen people who were more out of place than me, I finally felt at home.
I remember the first friend I made here in J-town. I came to lunch at Science Park and a man asked me if I liked basketball and if I would like to join him at the Kataja game that night. After that I became a regular at all the games and found myself with a friend, and playing basketball with a group of guys that accepted me as one of the group even though we hardly spoke a word to one another. Until many months and many beers later, one of the other guys finally spoke to me about his life and wouldn’t shut the hell up.
I’ve made many more friends since then and for the life of me, I can’t really think of one person I’ve met that I haven’t liked. I can think of dozens of people that I haven’t met whom I don’t like, but I’m sure if I stopped yelling at them to get on the right side of the bike path and got to know them, that we would soon become friends.
This is the last entry in the J-town journal for me. Next month I’m moving to the big, bad city of Helsinki, but in my heart I’ll always be Joensuulainen. It was my Finnish boot camp after all.
Sunday, November 20, 2005
hb very tired and about to go to bed, but I did not get to speak with my folks, and so wanted to wish them a happy anniversary today. Love ya
Friday, November 11, 2005
A whole helluva lot has happened in the two weeks since I was last able to say anything in this thing. First of all, Karoliina and I will have a new apartment in Helsinki at the beginning of December. So in like 2 weeks we will have an empty place and two weeks after that, we will have an empty place filled with boxes of our stuff and hopefully not too long after that we will have a place we can call home. And this place isn't just in Helsinki, it's smack dab in the middle of Helsinki. It couldn't be any more in the middle of Helsinki if it crawled into its belly. And the way we came across it makes it seem like fate. Or at least some sort of karmic rebate for having spent the last 2.5 years living in this town of J.
I looked at 5 apartments in 3 days and none of them were too my liking. OK, 2 of them would have been livable, but not too my liking. And they were expensive and they were dilapidated and they were just not that great. But since we were getting closer and closer to desperate I made my interest known on one of them. It was in a good location and pretty big, but really run down and it was expensive and it needed some work done that would have had to have been done by us. But still, it was the best I had seen and so we were going to take it if it came to us. It was an open house - as were the rest of them - and I was without K and had to stick around until after everyone else had left to have my little private talk with the realtor.
But not an hour after this private talk, Karoliina called and told me about another place that was available and I could go and see it on Thursday. Since time was of the essence and since I happened to be right at the address - it's that in the middle of Helsinki - I went up and checked it out right then and I was sold. Apparently the owners thought they had a bad place, but that's because they're stupid. The place is great, could only be better if it had closets, but that's what Finnish relatives are for, give them some wood and you can get anything you want, closet, radio, tv, you name it.
Turns out the guy was a graduate of Sibelius, where I now study and after further investigation the couple's daughter-in-law is best friends with Karoliina's cousin and is also a neighbor to K's parents. The couple was so worried that they would not be able to rent this place - and whenever we move in I'll take pictures to show you how crazy that notion is, well at least until after we get closets.
Onto other things. A couple of kids from the university paper told me that they were big fans of my column and likened my writing style to Hunter Thompson. I was flattered, but never really thought that I had a writing style. I've been writing this thing for almost a year - next month will be my last - and no one ever commented on my style, let alone made me aware that I had a bit of a fan club.
Also, at the train station - where I have been a regular lately - the ticket lady asked me in Finnish if I was the basketball guy. Fan club on a couple of levels, eh? Don't worry I won't let it get to my head.
Another topic. I was at a party for one of my classmates - who are all quite cool and for this we have all acknowledged that we are quite lucky - and there was 20 people there and half were French and the other half Spanish or Mexican and me and a few Finns. I recognize that the math doesn't work out but you get the idea. It was like no other party I have ever been to in Finland. Singing, shouting, dancing with no music. I met a Spanish guy, Juan who has been living in Finland for 5 years. He and I were comparing stories and kept saying, "Me too!" It was wild to think that there was someone else who had a very similar story as me. Except for the fact that he has lived in Helsinki his whole time, and his family in Spain aren't a hemisphere away, but still it was comforting.
What else? Had a meeting at the Ministry of Education for my project and walked away like I walk away from a roller coaster ride. Ups and downs galore. One minute I thought I did the deal, and the next minute I thought I had no chance whatsoever. When the meeting was over my colleague Irina and I looked at each other at could say nothing more than "Wow". And not really a good wow or a bad wow, but just wow. Fortunately we all agreed to digest the meeting and have another one soon. And I hope it's a lot sooner than later cause I got a new place and it costs money.
Oh yeah, one more thing. My director friend who has asked K and I to help translate his script into English has asked us to be present during the month long production next summer right here in Joensuu so that we can work with the actors on their dialogue right before they have to perform. We said sure. I don't think we will ever be able to fully escape this town and I don't think that that is such a bad thing.
I looked at 5 apartments in 3 days and none of them were too my liking. OK, 2 of them would have been livable, but not too my liking. And they were expensive and they were dilapidated and they were just not that great. But since we were getting closer and closer to desperate I made my interest known on one of them. It was in a good location and pretty big, but really run down and it was expensive and it needed some work done that would have had to have been done by us. But still, it was the best I had seen and so we were going to take it if it came to us. It was an open house - as were the rest of them - and I was without K and had to stick around until after everyone else had left to have my little private talk with the realtor.
But not an hour after this private talk, Karoliina called and told me about another place that was available and I could go and see it on Thursday. Since time was of the essence and since I happened to be right at the address - it's that in the middle of Helsinki - I went up and checked it out right then and I was sold. Apparently the owners thought they had a bad place, but that's because they're stupid. The place is great, could only be better if it had closets, but that's what Finnish relatives are for, give them some wood and you can get anything you want, closet, radio, tv, you name it.
Turns out the guy was a graduate of Sibelius, where I now study and after further investigation the couple's daughter-in-law is best friends with Karoliina's cousin and is also a neighbor to K's parents. The couple was so worried that they would not be able to rent this place - and whenever we move in I'll take pictures to show you how crazy that notion is, well at least until after we get closets.
Onto other things. A couple of kids from the university paper told me that they were big fans of my column and likened my writing style to Hunter Thompson. I was flattered, but never really thought that I had a writing style. I've been writing this thing for almost a year - next month will be my last - and no one ever commented on my style, let alone made me aware that I had a bit of a fan club.
Also, at the train station - where I have been a regular lately - the ticket lady asked me in Finnish if I was the basketball guy. Fan club on a couple of levels, eh? Don't worry I won't let it get to my head.
Another topic. I was at a party for one of my classmates - who are all quite cool and for this we have all acknowledged that we are quite lucky - and there was 20 people there and half were French and the other half Spanish or Mexican and me and a few Finns. I recognize that the math doesn't work out but you get the idea. It was like no other party I have ever been to in Finland. Singing, shouting, dancing with no music. I met a Spanish guy, Juan who has been living in Finland for 5 years. He and I were comparing stories and kept saying, "Me too!" It was wild to think that there was someone else who had a very similar story as me. Except for the fact that he has lived in Helsinki his whole time, and his family in Spain aren't a hemisphere away, but still it was comforting.
What else? Had a meeting at the Ministry of Education for my project and walked away like I walk away from a roller coaster ride. Ups and downs galore. One minute I thought I did the deal, and the next minute I thought I had no chance whatsoever. When the meeting was over my colleague Irina and I looked at each other at could say nothing more than "Wow". And not really a good wow or a bad wow, but just wow. Fortunately we all agreed to digest the meeting and have another one soon. And I hope it's a lot sooner than later cause I got a new place and it costs money.
Oh yeah, one more thing. My director friend who has asked K and I to help translate his script into English has asked us to be present during the month long production next summer right here in Joensuu so that we can work with the actors on their dialogue right before they have to perform. We said sure. I don't think we will ever be able to fully escape this town and I don't think that that is such a bad thing.
