The Hillbilly Viking

This has been an amazing vacation, and so far Finland is my favorite European country to date. Although saddened by the prospect of leaving, we know it’s time. I’ve eaten so much fish here that when I cut myself shaving this morning, my mercury-rich blood formed little balls and rolled around on the bathroom counter. Yep, it’s time to go (and possibly begin chelation therapy).

Helsinki is a progressive, liberal, clean world capital that serves as an example of what socialism can do very well. Although not perfect, I really get the whole happiness thing. 

On one hand, women and the LGBTQ+ community are well supported here. Having protective, Neanderthal tendencies, I tend to keep Patty in sight when traveling abroad. Too many variables (and I can’t imagine how her face appearing on a milk carton would reconcile with her lactose intolerance). Here, different story. I have never felt safer in a diverse community of over one million, anywhere. (Even in Iceland, the possibility of random, sheep-on-sheep crime kept me from completely letting my guard down.) The amount of pre-teens just walking around alone, unthreatened, and unguarded throughout the city is a bit nerve-racking until you adjust to the paradigm (who knew I harbored latent, parental instincts?)

And to my many friends and family members in the alphabet community, rest easy knowing that the Finns, without judgment, will welcome you and serve you their pissy coffee with the same, cold indifference they offer to everyone.

On a contradictory note, I have detected an undercurrent of increasingly vocal racism here. It’s buried in the Google reviews, dog-whistled in election propaganda, and explicit in the graffiti. Nationalism, tribalism, immigrant fatigue—call it what you want, but the exact same rhetoric that our Dorrito-colored, shit-stain of a former president weaponizes so effectively has found a toe-hold here in the great “white” north. Talk about pandemics. 

According to many studies, and most importantly, the opinion of our delightful, Muslim, natively-born-Finn-of-Somali-immigrant-parents, cab driver, both health care and education here are top notch, and he can never imagine living anywhere else based upon those two factors alone. When I asked him his opinion about American healthcare, he shook his head and in perfect English said, “You pay so much. I just can’t understand it.”  

Preaching to the choir, Ahmed. Preaching to the choir. 

The Finns are diverse, vibrant, healthy, educated, multilingual, and ecologically proactive. I applaud them, their social accomplishments, and their loftier notions. I just hope they can keep their more primitive instincts in check. 

Oh, and for the sake of all that is holy, I hope they learn to make coffee someday, too.