Snowstorms and Earthquakes

Memories of a California girl in Finland

The orange Volkswagen beetle skid across the snow-covered Finnish road north of Lappeenranta as Mikko cranked the steering wheel sharply around the turns and grinned gleefully. I hung tightly to the back of the driver’s seat to prevent myself from landing in the lap of my backseat companion. The four of us – Mikko, Arto, Artsie, and I -- laughed as we fishtailed from side to side. To a sun-drenched California native like me, these winter shenanigans were a novel experience.

All of a sudden, the car skidded out of control and lurched to a stop. We had slid off the road and into a deep snowbank. Instant silence. No engine sound, no laughter. Now what? The doors were blocked by snow so we rolled down the windows and just managed to squeeze out. A blast of cold air hit me square in the face. A quick survey of our surroundings made my confidence plummet. It was late afternoon, but it had been dark for hours. There were no signs of life in any direction. For the first time in my life, I began to seriously contemplate what it would be like to freeze to death if we couldn’t get help soon.

“Let’s walk down the road. We’re bound to come to a house soon,” said Mikko. Just one problem. I foolishly dressed for a California winter, not for an evening stroll down a Nordic country lane. My fingers and toes were already starting to tingle. Mikko must have read my mind because he opened the trunk and produced a pair of knee-high, boiled wool boots. Not quite the fashion statement I was hoping for, but enough to keep frostbite at bay.

Off we went, three Finnish college students and one California “mustalainen” ("the black one" - my nickname due to my dark hair and eyes). After what seemed like miles (okay, kilometers) we came to a farmhouse. I don’t really remember who said what to whom, but I know that after some discussion and more trudging through snow with lanterns, the farmer and his tractor pulled the beetle out of the snowbank. The rest of the drive to Mikko’s family home was a lesson in winter driving safety.

During this ordeal, I asked my Finnish friends if they ever worried about freezing to death. They looked at me like I was crazy, and then countered with a question of their own:  Wasn’t I afraid of earthquakes? “Well, you can’t prevent them, so it’s no use worrying about them,” I replied. I thought they were being equally paranoid, so we called it even. We are truly products of our environment. I made a mental note to wear warmer footwear next time.

This winter fiasco was just one of many eye-opening experiences I had during my year in Finland from 1981-1982. I was a teacher at the Finnish-American Society preschool in Lappeenranta. My year was filled with challenges, excitement, homesickness, frustration, and delight. Many of the details have dimmed over the years, but the memories and images are still strong.  Among them…

• Riding the one-speed bike I borrowed from one of the student’s families…putting a plastic bag on the seat to keep it dry

• Eating soup made from just-picked mushrooms and secretly hoping the cook could tell the poisonous and non-poisonous ones apart

• Driving, hiking, and then paddling a canoe to a kesamokki (summer cottage) in a lightning storm

• Having sauna ilta every week, and even beating myself with birch branches and plunging into a cold lake

• Drinking more coffee in one year than I had in the previous five years combined

• Collecting beautiful Suomen postimerkkit (stamps)

• Playing pesapallo (baseball) and running the wrong way after I hit the ball (it was the right way for American baseball, however)

• Enjoying pullat, Panda licorice, Karjalan piirakat, ruisleipa, jogurtti, and other Finnish delicacies

• Watching trucks haul away the snow when it piled up too high along the roadway

• Dancing the humppa (polka)

• Marveling at the Roma and their colorful outfits on market day

• Searching for the small section of English language books at the local library

• Watching “Soap” every Sunday evening in Finnish with English subtitles

• Trying desperately to learn basic Finnish as fast as I could to assimilate and become more self-sufficient

• Teaching the delightful Finnish children and then taking my turn as their student

• Leaving candles at family graves on Christmas Eve and watching the candlelight cast shadows on the crystalline snow

• Watching women weave at large looms in a basement to pass the long, dark, cold winter months

• Sliding down a slide into chilly Lake Saimaa with the Fuksies on Vapunpaiva (May Day)

• Tasting cloudberry liqueur for the first (and last) time

• Taking a “Vodka tourist” trip to St. Petersburg (then Leningrad) with a Finnish friend and marveling at the museums, culture, architecture, and, of course, the black market for jeans and pantyhose

• Adjusting to the treatment of alcohol as the “forbidden fruit” and seeing its impact on society

These memories would not be complete without a discussion of my attempts to learn Finnish.  I made it a personal goal from the moment I stepped off the plane to learn as much Finnish as I could. I felt it was my responsibility to adapt to the Finnish culture, not vice versa. Most Finns I encountered who spoke a passable amount of English were reluctant to use it, even when I stood in front of them struggling to put the strange words into an even stranger grammatical structure. I did everything I could to encourage my friends to use their Finnish: I avoided slang, I spoke slowly, I used proper grammar.

About midway through the year, however,

a curious thing happened. By this time I had a limited, but reasonable command of everyday conversation. I could actually tell my new friends in Finnish about my life and family back in California. All of a sudden, my friends who were oh so slowly starting to use their English with me, just stopped. Their reasoning was that since I could now understand and speak Finnish, they didn’t need to speak English any more! I guess I should have taken it as a compliment, but I viewed it as losing the one lifeline I had left. My security blanket for when I was overwhelmed by slang, by regional pronunciation (South Karelia vs. Helsinki, for example), and all those godforsaken grammatical cases. Oh well. I did the only thing I could under the circumstances – redoubled my efforts to master this strange tongue. 

Last spring I attended a corporate training class in West Hollywood. The other participants came from several of my company’s offices around the world. On the first day of the training I found myself sitting next to a young man from our Helsinki office. “Good morning,” he said to me as he sat down. “Hyvaa huomentaa,” I replied nonchalantly. He did a classic doubletake and stared at me and then at my name tag to see which office I was from. I proceeded to exhaust the few Finnish phrases I could pry out of the dark recesses of my brain. They came out of my mouth in spurts bringing the old memories with them. He was truly surprised to find a Californian with no Finnish ancestry speaking Finnish.

All we needed was an earthquake or a freak snowstorm to complete the picture. But In Hollywood, they say, almost anything is possible.