newadventures
i hope this prints in english.well despite the various thought processes i've gone through since that last post, i'm moving on anyway because it's only been a week and the stories have piled up.
i was only three days in helsinki, finland. here are my observations:
helsinki is actually much like mayfield village, ohio, the suburbs at least, and the city itself is much like i imagine boston to be, or some small sized city. the public transportation is clean and super easy. there are pines, other trees i wish i knew the name of that are similar to northern u.s. and it is flat.
something strange for me who has never experienced this - it grows darker maybe around 12:30 am, but notice i say darkER, never completely dark, really, and then it stays that way until it gets light around 3 or 4 am. very, very weird. i had no sense of time.
it is also strange to be in a crowd of white people and not understand a word of the language they are speaking. again, strange because i haven't experienced this before. i can blend in, this is something new for my travels, and unless i open my mouth, i could pass for a Finn, which i apparently did, since several people started speaking to me in Finnish. the other thing is that learning languages are just so normal, every Finn learns finnish, of course, and Swedish is also obligatory (Finland belonged to the kingdom of Sweden for some 600 years or something), and then of course almost everyone speaks excellent English, and Russia is right near (and considered a threat as well) and then you learn whatever else - German, French, Spanish, Greek, whatever. i was so surprised about the english. i mean, people i spoke english too spoke it really well. and of course it was inevitable i would be making comparisons to ecuador and to ohio, etc, which i tried to be fair and understanding in these comparisons...
but one thing i noticed, which i wanted to wait to make comparisons on this (but couldn't because in estonia it is different) but i finally pinpointed this weird feeling - their english was good, and it seemed most people in helsinki spoke it, but it didn't feel like there was this longing for the states, like there is in ecuador. i think that i notice this feeling in ecuador from inevitable conversations about the states, about migration, it's the way people look at you, the way people talk about english, the way people ask about what life is like in the u.s....there wasn't this feeling in finland (yes, three days is NOT enough to conclude this). and in ecuador, it's like this longing to be there, to migrate and work in order to have enough money for a home and to never go hungry, but at the same time a bitter resentment about being labeled "third world," "backward," "developing," etc. like they understand that powerful governments and institutions and people who manage third-world poverty think that they will never be good enough, that they can't be creative, that they're too debt-ridden to ever follow their own path.
i was thinking that even though helsinki was so similar to the u.s., it's not like they developed the city AFTER the u.s. so i was thinking about the history of materials, and where things come from, and education, etc. helsinki was just helsinki, it wasn't a "third world imitation" of the West, and everyone spoke english but it was just to speak english, and not because anyone is thinking of moving to the states. i was thinking how money travels...and raw materials travel...
i don't know, it's just a feeling.
more later.
posted by leah v @ 12:37 PM
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