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.
// posted by Howard @ 1:40 PM 
