Helsinki

From the warm embrace of Greece to the stark beauty of Helsinki, the first shock I received was not cultural but rather of the literal temperature variety. My flight landed quite late, and once my taxi dropped me off at the compound that contained my AirBnB, it took me over 20 minutes to find the right door to try and enter into. I like to imagine that shivering Americans in shorts and sandals rooting around for hidden keys in the garden at 1:30 am is a common enough occurrence that the neighbors don’t even bother to call the police anymore.

I spent quite a bit of time in Helsinki at a coworking space called “Flux“, run by Microsoft. It was a neat experience, sitting around on couches with a bunch of other geeks, even though I didn’t end up talking to many of them. (That’s where the cultural differences really started to show from Greece, where I had multiple long conversations with the locals).

My cultural breakthrough didn’t come until my last night, when I realized that I hadn’t booked my AirBnB for the entire duration of my stay, so I had to book another one for the last night. I found one very close to the airport, and when the host accepted me, he invited me out to drinks with his coworkers for my last night in Helsinki. That was a truly lovely experience, drinking and laughing with a group of Finns and some other expats, and was the first time I felt truly warm both inside and out in Finland. 🙂