Helsinki, running with popcorn

Brian and I arrived in Helsinki two days before Christmas with a very specific purpose. We had tickets to see Star Wars. We knew that in Finland the movie would be in original version. This is a phrase I never knew before moving to Germany, but original version means that the voices you hear are the actors' own. So Yoda sounds like Yoda, and the dialogue isn't dubbed. In our case, the movie had subtitles in both Finnish and Swedish. But first, the story of how we got there.

When checking into the hotel, we asked the bellman for directions to the kino (this is the semi-international word for movie theater). His eyes lit up. "Are you going to see Star Wars?" he asked. Brian nodded enthusiastically. Finns are not known for being chatty, but Star Wars is the universal language of males, at least those between the ages of 8 and 48. Talking sports works pretty well, but it hits a dead end in certain circles. Star Wars can't be beat. As our bellman, let's call him Tuukka (because I think that's a cool Finnish name) and Brian discussed the merits of the latest interplanetary struggles and the reach of various light sabers, I realized that Star Wars is also the way to loosen up a Finn's tongue. Probably vodka works too, but we didn't try that.

We quickly looked at the map from Tuukko, then headed out into the Helsinki night, in search of the aging Han Solo. We took a wrong turn. Then we headed back, made what seemed to be a right turn and asked directions. We started to follow the directions, but then found the movie theater, right inside a mall. We headed in and showed the blond teenage girl at the counter the tickets I had bought online. "Those are tickets," she said. Yes, thank you, I knew that. But at least she spoke some English. "You show them at the theater door." So Brian and I went down into this mostly dark shopping mall and found the concessions stand. A Pepsi and a bucket of popcorn later, we found the theater door and waited. And waited. No one was there and the show was set to start in 10 minutes. I went back to the teenage girl and expressed my concern. "That's ok," she said "someone will come in a few minutes." My Star Wars-loving husband was getting nervous.

 The teenage girl went on break and was replaced by a pimply blond teenage boy (of course they are blond; this is Scandanavia). He took a look at my tickets again and said "you're at the wrong theater." It turns out that Helsinki has a lot of shopping malls with movie theaters in them. So he gives me some directions and we're off running (literally) to the correct theater, in the correct mall, with 5 minutes to show time. Could we have just bought tickets to the later show, which was also showing at the 'wrong' theater? Sure, but that would have been too easy.

Instead, I was jogging through downtown Helsinki in the dark, clutching a bucket of movie popcorn. We made it, panting, to the correct theater. "Don't worry," says the pimply blond boy who scans our tickets at the door, "there are still 5 minutes of previews. As we sank into our seats and took off our coats, I realized that our popcorn bucket was obviously not from this theater. Thank goodness for the Finns - nobody said anything.

Christmas is coming

This past weekend was the one when the lady at the bakery counter (who talks in an incredibly high voice, as if she is inhaling helium balloons in the back room) wishes you a happy fourth Advent Sunday. For sale under her glass counter are an array of German Christmas-time treats. There are mounds of Stollen, and Lebkuchen and Zimtsterne.  You'd think something delicious would come from the land where they invented oh Tannenbaum.

But no. They all taste like sawdust. Some taste like spiced sawdust, dusted with sugar. They look nice until you bite in and reach for a bucket of milk to wash them down.

Which is partly why I spent many hours this week baking. I make very buttery, sugary, artificially colored cookies that melt in your mouth. Germans probably hate them.

I have written about Advent before, but it's been so long that I might as well do it again. A week before Christmas and people are just starting to take home their trees. There are some tasteful candles in windows and poinsettias at the flower shop. But the colorful, brightly lit, noisy Christmas celebration is reserved for the Christmas market in town. This is something that Americans, even with our light-up reindeer and inflatable Santas, cannot beat.

And this Christmas we headed to another market. Hamburg was the destination, to visit little Fiona (her parents too). A day-long Christmas market crawl is usually not appealing, at least not without several mugs full of hot Glühwein along the way. This year, though, record-setting warmth made it like Christmas in April. In weather that would have had Minnesotans pulling on their shorts, most Germans I see on the streets have been dressing in puffy coats and hats and multiple scarves. They're dressing more for the calendar than for the temperature. But after a few weeks of the warm spell, I noticed a change. The scarves have loosened and the hats have come off. The down coats are half unzipped. Pretty soon, maybe people will start breaking out their shorts.

I am not in Germany this Christmas, and not back home either. Brian and I are heading to Finland, where hopefully the temperatures are colder and snow is falling. We'll be skiing and looking at the northern lights and searching for Santa Claus. We might try eating some reindeer too (sorry Rudolph). We can also try out the Finnish cookies and see if they taste like sawdust.
I will make sure to write all about it.

So from my home to yours, wherever it may be, I wish you a very peaceful and joyful Christmas.
Frohes Fest!

Directions

A man on the street stopped me as I parked my bike one afternoon, and asked for directions the housing office. I used to cringe when people stopped me to ask directions. Partly it was because I usually didn't know where they wanted to go, but also because I was often unsure how to explain that to them without sound like a complete idiot. Now, after four years, my attitude has changed. I may still not know where my fellow pedestrians are heading and maybe I still can't articulate that perfectly. But if they don't like my answer then they should have just asked someone else.

This new-found confidence failed me the other night. When it was already pitch dark at 5:30, an old man asked me how to get to the tram stop. I pointed to it, told him where to go and watched him walk away. He hobbled right past the entrance to the station and kept going. I felt deeply, awfully guilty. Somebody's Opa was now wandering the streets of Hannover with his walker, and would probably get mugged and cause a car accident and have a heart attack from the shock. Then he and all his family would curse the foreigner who didn't walk him right to the tram. In all likelihood this did not happen, because nobody gets mugged in Hannover.

Back to my original story - the housing office (Wohnungsamt) is an easy one because it's just down the street from my building. I have a lot of confidence giving directions there. Every day of the week, a small crowd mills around the entrance. They are either waiting for the office to open, or staring at the door, puzzled why it's locked. If you want to visit the housing office, you have a window of just a few hours a day. If you show up during between the hours of 9 and 5, it's a long shot as to whether you can get in. If it's a Wednesday, forget it.

The fact that the housing office is there definitely increases the number of foreigners in my otherwise white, German, yuppie neighborhood. One day when I was in the grocery store, a couple (who had probably gone to visit the housing office and found it closed), stopped me near the bakery case. "Do you speak English?" They asked. Do I ever! They asked me to help them read the labels in front of the different croissants. She was wearing a head scarf and he looked vaguely Middle Eastern, and together we decided that the ham and cheese-filled croissant was not what they were looking for. There one next to it was labeled 'Nuss-nougat', which is the generic term for Nutella. I asked if they knew what Nutella is. She wrinkled her forehead for a moment in concentration, then said, "oh! chocolate." I nodded enthusiastically and they grabbed a few nutella croissants with the plastic tongs. I may have failed the old man looking for his tram, but I had helped this couple. I too had been baffled by items at the grocery store, and more than once took something home not sure of exactly what I'd find in the package, As women, as foreigners, she and I found common ground in love of chocolate.  Some things are universal.