Well Hello and Welcome to Part 2 of the special edition series finale “Emma leaves Finland and Blogs for the duration of her Travels home.” The following posts were written during my 28+ hour journey from Helsinki to Vancouver and are both a real-time chronicle of my jet-lagged mind, and a recap on the last few weeks in Helsinki. I’ve broken it up into (fairly) managable parts and will be posting throughout the week. Enjoy!

7:41 am Helsinki time; the air somewhere between HEL and MUC (003 hours blogging)

Having boarded my flight to Munich, I felt the soft veil of sleep sweep over my eyes, the deep Lufthansa chairs lulling me into naptime, the sweet, lilting German flight attendant tell us what to do “in case of an emer-gen-see.” The merciless screaming of the cabin child even entered the background hum… until I realized that it was the merciless screaming of a child. For the obligatory-crying-cabin-baby, this one seemed a little old because he/she was howling a whining babble, punctuated with “Aaaiiitii” (Mooommmmyyy). I listened not because I especially wanted to, but because it sounded like the child was being murdered, or more aptly, like he was watching his dearest toy being murdered. The kid was losing his shit. I suppose I would be losing my shit too, if I were in a huge metal tube that suddenly started moving and my teddy bear were being decapitated before my eyes. He didn’t stop screaming until we were well in the air, but thankfully now is silent.

As we lifted up I got my first view of Helsinki from above (after all, I arrived in the middle of January when the sky was a permanent opaque white) and man it is cute. Little clusters of buildings separated by thick green forest and edged by sea- and then out to sea, splatterings of islands and sand dunes. Pretty geometric clusters. Of course, barely a cloud in the sky. Siiiiigh. For all my complaining and homesickness in the winter, Helsinki is honestly a wonderful place when the sun is shining. There was only about two or three weeks of coldish “spring” between the time the snow melted and the time the city exploded with green. The following pictures were ones I took from my bedroom window only a few days apart, and they illustrate pretty well how quickly everything lushed-out:

Picture 1 taken May 11.
Picture 2 taken May 18.

I believe this was mostly due to the increased light during the day- another crazy thing about the city. Not an evening passed where someone would comment “Holy crap, it’s 11 pm?! I thought it was 9!” And that would be no exaggeration. When I went to sleep around 1:30 this morning, it was already getting light, after maybe an hour of “night” darkness.

(May 28th, 12.30 am from my apartment window)

Midsummer is apparently the highlight (badum ch) of life in Finland- in Helsinki it gets “dusky” for a few hours before getting light again. This should have been something I stayed to see, but as you may (or may not) know I have some previous engagements in Vancouver that dearly need attending. Namely, on June 8th, Benn and I will commence our bicycle tour across Canada. But more details on that later. Now is about reflecting.

As I was getting to, all this greenery and warm weather and finishing up of project actually made me pretty sad to leave Helsinki. As with any trip, I felt I was just getting to know the city when I had to get up and go. 4 and a half months is a difficult span of time, because its not long enough to really get into anything (though I admit, it would have been a lot harder to leave after staying for say, 8 months). And of course, the closer you get to the people around you, the hard it is to say goodbye. Anyway, between the last few days of packing/cleaning furiously and now leaving, I have been listening to Paul Simon non-stop to keep me from feeling too down. While I am sad to leave this period behind, I’m not that sad because a)I know I will see many of those people again, what with having some good connections in Europe now and b) because I am fricken stoked for my summer trip, and for getting back to Emily Carr. And anyway, nothing cures a heavy heart like Paul and Ladysmith Black Mambazo grooving out to “Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes.”

Isn’t Paul Simon just the cutest little thing? Yes yes.

Come back for more adventure and intrigue, FINNale updates June 5th!