It’s finally happening. I won the Cavin Traveling Fellowship in early May of 2020, and after 16 months, the bulk of a pandemic, a new job and a big move, I’m on my way.
My trip begins in Finland, then to Berlin by way of Copenhagen, then Prague, Vienna and Budapest, and finally Barcelona and southern Spain. I’ll be home for Thanksgiving.
But first, I had to get into Finland. They had only recently opened their borders to tourists (late July) and with the rise of the Delta variant, I spent weeks obsessively refreshing the websites of the embassy, the border guard, and any other reliable resource to monitor the situation. Even then, I wasn’t 100% sure they would let me into the country until they stamped my passport.
The trip was 28 hours, door-to-door but what it lacked in brevity, it made up for in ease. During my long layover in LA, my brother met me at the airport with two boxes of pastries, one sweet, one savory, and then drove out to Manhattan beach where we ate croissants and croquettes while watching the surfers from the pier.
I still can’t quite decide how I feel about my flight from LAX to Helsinki. The plane was clean and new, the service was good, and the plane was 7/8 empty. On the one hand, it was about the safest I felt, COVID-wise, for the whole journey, and I had roughly 40 seats to myself, so I could REALLY spread out. On the other hand, it was kind of eerie, being alone in a space that was designed to hold that many people. Shortly before landing, we were served blueberry juice with breakfast, and treated to a cabin light display mimicking the aurora borealis.
It was a perfect autumn afternoon in Helsinki. The air was clear and crisp, the sun was bright, and the sky was a blue that I had forgotten was possible, accustomed as I am to the Bay Area’s late summer haze and smoke. I ended up getting on the right tram, going in the wrong direction, so I decided to walk across the city to my apartment, which was the first happy accident of my trip. The streets were full of people out enjoying the beautiful weather with their loved ones (and dogs, lots of people here seem to own dogs), and Helsinki had that golden-hour glow. My apartment is in a cheery yellow Art Nouveau building. It is cozy, decorated with period art and furniture, and has a tiled fireplace in the corner that I am more-or-less totally in love with.
By the time I walked in the door, I was too tired to do much more than eat dinner and go to sleep, so any additional exploring would have to wait until Day 2.