Quick! Save that person!

 

Quick! Someone has fallen into the water. How do you save that person?

If your instincts fail you, and your Finnish does also, you can use some online translators such as Google or DeepL to read what you need to do on the handy advice board. You quickly get:

SAVE HELP GUIDE

Instructions for use in case of a hatchet
General hat number 112

SHOW!     CALL 112!     THEM!

KAHLAA!   PULL!

But you quickly conclude that you have no hatchet and you do not want to call for a hat. And a few of those other words do not seem to be what you need to do....

Then you realize...you did not type in the letters with accents! a IS NOT ä

You typed: Toimintaohjeet hatatilanteessa

You should have typed: Toimintaohjeet hätätilanteessa

You replace the a with ä and your "Instructions for use in case of a hatchet" turns into "Emergency procedures"

And with the correct ä the "General hat number 112" turns into "General emergency number 112" -- now you are getting somewhere. But onto the rescue instructions. 

HUUDA! gets translated as SHOW! or HELLO!, so you suppose you may need to greet the person in need of help. 

SOITA 112! is CALL 112, so you have that part down. You are mastering Finnish!

HEITA gets translated as THEM with or without the ä accent...so you are stumped there. Move on!

KAHLAA! gets translated as KAHLAA! and that just seems odd...so you type it in as lowercase and you get WADE...and now you are getting some good advice. The pictograms are starting to make sense. You are supposed to get into the water, too. 

Finally, VEDA! gets translated as PULL! and, yes, you remember seeing that command on Finnish doors. But no time to congratulate yourself on your improving Finnish. Time to act. 

1. Greet the floundering person
2. Call 112
3. Ignore the "them" stuff (maybe we need to use a gender-free pronoun) and show the victim the life preserver ring as illustrated on the sign.
4. Wade into the water (and hope that this scenario does not take place in January, February, March, April, May, September, October, November, or December).
5. Pull! With what, well, you can ad lib that part.

And that is why we need to study and practice Finnish more so that we know what to do when companions or strangers fall tin the water.

Simple reminders...

 

As I wander around Helsinki, I am fortunate to know more of its history than the "average" tourist. I am not bragging, but I feel sorry for those who cannot pick up on the reminders of the past. In front of the Bank of Finland (Snellmaninaukio, 00101 Helsinki) is a statue of Johan Vilhelm Snellman, one of the promoters of Finnish nationalism in the 19th century. A famous person anyone interested in Finland should recognize. And if you look closer at the pediment, you can see gouges in the stone. Maybe an average tourist would think these are marks of vandalism or age. But they are simple reminders, left on purpose. In this case, reminders of the Russian bombings of Helsinki during WWII. War damage reminders from a dark time. Reminders that we Americans do not encounter in our streets.

Do not use your tram table

 

Finns do not waste things, and they do not go for extravagance just for fancy design. If something exists, it is meant to be used.

Except for your tram table. 

Finns do not like to be close to strangers (or even non-strangers), and never clump together when being physically apart is possible. However, sometimes they are forced into uncomfortable situations, such as can be found on a tram. The newer Artic trams have those awkward seats where passengers can sit two-to-a-side, face to face -- but this seating arrangement is to be shunned unless absolutely necessary, perhaps if the tram were packed full. And sometimes it is.

Yet, if avoiding close contact with others is the game, why is there a convenient tram table between seats? Certainly not to use as a tool for sharing drinks (drinking is not allowed on trams unless you really want to drink something) or sharing food (eating is not allowed on trams unless you really want to eat something). No social interaction is carried out on these tables that I have ever seen unless the four seats are filled with close friends who seem very happy to be together and boisterous at the thought of a night out...and these are probably tourists, anyway.

I think I finally realized why these tables exist: as a means to help preserve the privacy of strangers forced to face one another for a few brief moments. These tables are not meant to bring us closer together by encouraging some sort of spontaneous sharing. These tables are meant as a small physical reminder to supplement the ever-present mental distance we are encouraged to maintain.

Winter-weather running

 

Running in Helsinki does not take a break for weather. If you did, you would not be able to run for at least 3-4 months of the year. Helsinki runners are out there in conditions that would normally keep me home with my shoes off in Indiana. And shoveling.

For one thing, when it snows in Helsinki, there is not much shoveling going on. Major streets sort of get cleared at times, but sidewalks and paths just get the gravel treatment. Gravel does not melt snow, and gravel is only mildly effective until it is squashed into the snow (often) or snowed upon again (frequent).

I have never run before in the states when there was snow on the ground. And now I have discovered that, in Helsinki, snow on the ground means that is is a good time to run...because if you are not running on snow, you are probably running on ice. And running on ice is only possible if you are wearing spike shoes or strap-on spikes. There is no other way, and I have tried but have proven that without it is an insane activity that would eventually maim you.

But now I am a dedicated snow and ice runner; strap-on-spikes are the best 20-euro bargain I have ever made in Finland. However, I cannot get too proud of my winter-weather running. As I run in snow and sleet over slosh and ice, I am reminded that I am no-big-deal by all the mothers strolling their babies and the dog walkers that I pass . . .

Penguin walk + spikes

Even though I have spent winter months in Helsinki before (November, December, January, February, March), I have never had my mobility so impaired. There is no train, or tram, or bus problem, however, and I have been driven by car several times, too. The challenge is that you have to move on foot occasionally between such means of transport. Like down the street a bit. But the cycle of light snow, light rain, steady temperatures around freezing, and people tromping about on the sidewalks have made  a simple stroll into an ordeal that could only please an American personal injury lawyer. 

I have now seen three adults simply fly off their feet...and what is amazing to me is that there is not more public slipping. In fact, it is impressive how people move over walks that can qualify as Olympic curling lanes, if Olympic curling lanes would be occasionally sprinkled with gravel, more ice added to top, then more gravel sprinkled, etc. How do they do it? Finns have told me there are two solutions (both of which I reported on earlier):

• Do the penguin walk
• Wear spikes (built into footwear or strapped on)

I thought I could waddle as well as any penguin, and often I have. I have learned to take shorter steps, pay attention to each footfall, maintain a steady pace with no sudden slowing or acceleration, grab a railing when going up or down stairs (I don't know how penguins can do that), avoid turning corners quickly, avoid turning corners at all, and never to get too cocky (Hey, look at me go, I am moving so wellllllll.....).

The penguin walk is not sufficient. And I am sure I have seen some of those Funny Animal Videos of penguins slipping and landing on their backsides. So it is time to get serious, and to accept the challenge. I have actually purchased my first set of spikes since my 8th-grade football team. But these spikes are not meant for running around on a soft, grassy field like those dull, rounded plastic football cleats; these are thin, metal spikes meant to dig into ice. Bonus: they make a satisfying crunch when you are walking on ice, even if they make a sort of embarrassing clink if you have to cross an occasional piece of uncovered pavement (rare in some areas, more common in others). The spikes do work…you can still slip a bit but at least you have a chance that the spikes will dig in before your feet leave the ground. A combination of the penguin walk with your new spikes gets you moving along just fine.

Mistakes, errors, and flubs

I did not try to steal this!

Living in a foreign county can make you feel rather simple at times. You miss clues that are obvious to natives of the culture but that are invisible for you. You begin to remember how you felt when you were 3 years old and your parents took you out into the adult world. As a child, you would look up and around in awe at everything -- some of it fascinating, some of it scary. But your parents were there to help make sense of everything and to hold your hand…and you could navigate the world safely.

Now you are again in a foreign country where you have already spent more than 8 months during a 10-year period. And you still get sometimes get confused but have no hand to hold.

It can be a daily struggle. You make mistakes. I call them "mistakes" because they just happen like that. Sure, you make mistakes back in your homeland (get in the wrong line, lose the word for something, etc.), but they just don't seem so discouraging.

I thought I would keep a running list of all my mistakes for the past two weeks:

• forgot my key -- locking us out of our apartment for the first time ever
• used my credit card for a 27-cent purchase when I had a fistful of euros because of …reasons that would need another post to describe
• purchased a big bag of coffee beans when I have never ever had a bean grinder either here or in the United States and do not even drink coffee
• walked past my tram stop in the desperate cold way down to the next one -- from which the tram departed and next stopped at the one I should have been at (but I was not there)
• bought an 8-euro ticket that I promptly dropped into an unreachable area between the sales counter and the candy rack (the salesclerk cheerily told me that when things drop down there they are hard to get -- and she promptly sold me another 8-euro ticket)
• put the wrong sticker on the self-serve pastry bag, and appeared to be a pastry thief ("sir, that is two pastries, not one pastry")
• succeeded in having a bus driver stop the bus to let me off in a place that definitely was not the bus stop because it was actually a snow drift that I had to climb over ("this American seems to want off here, so I suppose he knows what he is doing")
• put the fabric softener in the washing detergent slot, and the washing detergent in the fabric softener slot, and "washed" the clothes (my report: it all came out fine, so I suspect some sort of scam with this cleaning routine)
• convinced myself I would really like salted, fried Baltic herring this time but I did not when I took a bite in a public place
• could not figure out for several days how to answer phone calls on my university-supplied Samsung phone (ok, you swipe that button onscreen because pressing it does nothing); I blame easy iPhone habits that have spoiled me, btw.
• purchased three sepia ink pens when I intended to buy three black ink pens -- even though the packaging was in English, it said SEPIA on the top, and the color of the nice drawing on the package was sepia.
• pushed when I should have pulled, pulled when I should have pushed -- countless times on numerous doors (see: Helling Helsingissä: Once again: Finnish doors (hellinghelsingissa.blogspot.com). This is an ongoing, eternal issue.

But I am happy to report that the list of things I am doing right is too long to publish here. It's just that these things don't seem to affect me as easily as those other things I do...and no one congratulates me when I do the right thing.

Forward like grandma in the snow

I was told by a Finn that to endure takes persistence. And persistence is the Finnish character, as anyone who spends some time in Finland soon learns...especially in winter. I am not saying that winters in Helsinki have been colder or even snowier than in Indiana, however. In fact, Helsinki weather can be quite temperate compared to the sub-freezing plunges of the Mid-West. But gray skies, less daylight, and snow just seem to last a lot longer in Finland.

The Finns have many expressions and even words (see "sisu") to express their character, but the expression I learned most recently is:

Eteenpäin kuin mummo lumessa. --> Forward like grandma in the snow.

And that is a good attitude to have when it is cold, dark, and snowy. The grandmas are moving through the snow here, with their ski poles, doing Nordic walking (sauvakävely).