The Helsinki sign in the city’s Main Square
Every summer it was just implied that my sisters, my mom and I would be traveling to India to visit my family. We take a direct flight there, enjoy ourselves for about a month and a half and then come back home. One particular year, I came home from school and was informed by my mother that the tickets were booked and she managed to save 1200 dollars. The catch was that we would be staying over in Helsinki, Finland for 12 hours. At the age of 11, I didn’t quite understand the value of 1200 dollars and was just upset that we were going to be spending 12 hours in a country I knew very little about. However, once we arrived in Helsinki, I knew I was in for a treat.
When I heard “Finland,” I automatically just pictured thousands of miles of farms and villages, but nothing special. Helsinki completely changed that. The city has an antique beauty the liveliness of a bustling metropolis. The architecture and design of the buildings was ornamental yet contemporary. The clean brick streets brought a sense of peace and splendor into the city, something I wasn’t familiar to in the bustling concrete streets of New York. The city fascinated me from its luscious food to its philanthropic casinos (which fund the public school system in the entire country). On the drive along the waterside I knew that cultural encounters like this would really open my mind to life-changing experiences and I thanked my mom for those amazing 12 hours.
Your post is a great example of encountering new cultures by chance. I think it interesting that you believed Finland would be “nothing special”, but upon arriving your perception of the country changed drastically. For me, it is the great diversity of culture and scenery that is truly exciting. Although New York is nothing like home, it is “special” in its own way. Of course it doesn’t have the vast amount of trees and green grass that I am accustomed too, but it does have many things that cannot be found anywhere else in the world. If every place were to be the same, life would be boring. Personally, it is somewhere in between the rolling hills of Ireland and the towering skyscrapers of New York that beauty reveals itself.
Rishi, By adding a few specific examples of surprises that you found in Helsinki, you would greatly enrich this blog post.
I’ve never been to Finland or heard much about it, but from your experience it seems like an interesting place. I like how at first you state how disappointed you were, but it is great that the 12 hour layover was a good experience for you. Your story is a wonderful example of how keeping an open mind can really enrich life. I think that because you kept an open mind about Finland, you enjoyed it a lot more, from the architecture to the streets and everything else. Maybe layovers aren’t a terrible waste of time after all.