“What’s Idaho?”
“It’s a state. It’s in the U.S. It’s where I’m from.” I told him.
“Is it near Vermont?” he asked. The old faded t-shirt I bought way back in ‘84 when I considered enrolling at the University of Idaho, was the seed that started the conversation. I had learned on past trips to Finland that it’s very out of character for a Finn to initiate a conversation with a stranger. That was the first of maybe hundreds of situations when I would tell myself I was no longer in America.
“No. It’s on the other side of the country. Out by Washington and Oregon and just below Canada. It’s a nice place.”
The bartender showed little emotion or enthusiasm. The beer taps in front of him, had names that were unknown to me, when I traveled to Finland for the first time, three years earlier. Lapin Kulta, Koff, Karjala. Not the usual Bud, Coors, Olympia or Henry’s, I saw back in Boise. I could only imagine that his job of selling beers, hot dogs and coffee to the passengers of the trains, had become a very repetitive routine of making change, cleaning tables, pouring drinks then running to catch the number 42 bus to ice hockey practice. He probably saw many of the same businessmen every week, heading for the Nokia offices in Espoo, 30 kilometers to the west. That look in his eyes told me that he had gone through the routine, hundreds or maybe even thousands of times before. He reminded me of many of the guys I worked with at the plywood mill, back in Sandpoint, way up in Northern Idaho. Those miserable eight months had a lot to do with why I had traveled 7,000 miles to Helsinki, Finland.
“I had a cousin who studied engineering in Vermont. He didn’t like it very much. He came back after a year.” The bartender told me.
“Why was that?” I asked.
“No lakes. The ice hockey team in his town played only two months of the year and people talked too much. He missed Finland so much, he started checking out the bus fare to the airport at Boston, after ice hockey season was over.”
“I can imagine how he felt. Culture shock is a difficult thing to deal with. I don’t think I heard ten words when I ate breakfast at my hotel this morning. Finns seem like very quiet people. I think sometimes, Americans are afraid of silence.”
He put his towel down, looked at the crowd of passing travelers, then looked over at me, as if I was the only American he had seen all week. “What brings you to Finland?”
“Well, there’s a band up in Kuopio that I want to check out. I’ll be meeting with a guy from a record company about a possible job. I was here on vacation last year, when a guy I knew back in the States, said he might have a job for me. Hey, I’ve got five minutes before my train leaves. Maybe I’ll tell you
