Flying and Sleeping

I left New York around 8pm on Friday, December 29th. The flights really weren’t too bad. There was a young woman sitting next to me on the way to Munich at first. She was telling me that she had planned to be an au pair for a year, but it didn’t work out so she was leaving after 3 months. Then she said, “I really feel terrible, too.” I said, “Don’t feel bad about it, I’m sure it’s for the best.” She replied, “No, I mean I feel sick. I think I have a fever and I’ve been sneezing like crazy.” Luckily, there was a whole row empty across from us, and so she moved over there to stretch out. After that, I fell asleep just long enough to miss dinner, but luckily my mother had packed some delicious foodstuffs for me to take along. I tossed and turned for most of the night, not really sleeping despite a glass of red wine and a sleeping pill. The next morning, I had a short layover in Munich, and was off to Helsinki. When I told the passport control woman that my final destination was Helsinki, she said, “Funny, you don’t look crazy.” I guess most of the world is not interested enough in mathematics to brave a Finnish winter.

Ironically, it was about 30F when I arrived in Helsinki, but most of continental Europe was covered in massive amounts of snow from a huge storm a few days ago. By the time I got to my hostel, it was 4pm local time, and I fell asleep for a few hours. Around 8pm I went “exploring”, and the city was completely dead. Everything was closed, and it was eerily empty even on the main touristy streets. I saw a few interesting things.






So I went back to the hostel, fully intending to go back out around 11pm to find some sort of New Year’s Eve celebration. Unfortunately, I fell asleep and didn’t wake up till 3am. Sorry Mario! A few hours of math later came breakfast, a sauna, and half an hour with the high intensity lamp. Happily, I felt like a million bucks. I headed out to find a grocery store and see if there were any cafés open, particularly any with free internet. Found the food, but not the internet. It really was quite pleasant – snowing lightly and about 30F. Unfortunately, all the museums I wanted to see are closed for New Year’s Day. The only one I found open was the only one I didn’t like when I visited last summer. I decided not to buy a tram pass since it was so warm out, but I’ve somehow managed to screw up my left foot and all this walking is starting to be painful.

So at dinner on New Years day, I met Julio, an Argentine Jew who had moved to Finland for a girl, only to fall on her bad side soon after arriving (after three years of living together in Argentina – “She was a different person in the cold weather”). We went to a bar “Lost and Found” which was populated mainly by Finnish heavy metal wannabes. I must have looked quite out of place in my kind of preppy attire. At least they looked as ridiculous to me as I did to them.