The One Time I Wanted Out of Finland

Peaceful. It’s the single word to fully describe Finland to me. To grasp the kind of peace I am talking about, try to imagine a storybook fairytale castle. The streets of the kingdom are clean, people always smiling as the world around them is filled with sparkling emerald blue water, a crisp spring breeze, and green foliage as far as the eye can see. Days are engulfed with sun-drenched goodness and laughter. Suddenly, BOOM! An atomic bomb sends a mushroom cloud to heaven along with the beautiful souls of every person and animal with it! If the above scenario seems a little disturbing, good. I made my point because that is exactly how I felt when a simple trip to the doctor became a 48 hour dumpster fire.

On Wednesday, October 20, 2021, I scheduled a second doctor’s appointment in Helsinki after I found out that I had eczema on both feet, still. At around 9.25a that morning, I blissfully started to get myself together to ride the 9.33a train to Helsinki. Halfway to the train station I spotted what looked like a great photo and began to reach for my phone, but decided it wasn’t worthy and steadily walked to the train as it pulled in as I arrived. Spinning around then slowly lowering myself to my seat, I leaned to my left cheek and grabbed my phone out of my pocket, but nothing was there. My phone was gone!

Immediately, I began to pat myself as if I was the cops and the burglar searching frantically as I went over every pocket, but nothing. I went to stand up to look outside and BING…the train bell went off and so did the train. I looked around for a moment to see if I dropped it on the floor, but it was gone. As I sat in the chair looking out the window, my mind started to race in all directions to make out what just happened. At one point I took a huge deep breath, closed my eyes, and started to focus on breathing in my nose and out of my mouth. Several breaths later, I was still half pissed and mostly hurt about my phone as I got another kick to the ding dings!

Question, can you ride a train for free? Well, I didn’t stop at the ticket kiosk and couldn’t purchase one on my phone hence, what should have been an easy 8 euro trip to Helsinki possibly just turned into 80 euros. Although I had the money to pay it, why would I want to pay ten times the amount? So, I sat on the train my mind went from zero to 60 in a matter of seconds. Now, it was at 100mph and I had no idea how to stop this. My only hope was the train conductors who check tickets wouldn’t get on this train…for the next hour.

The next hour was going to be very uncomfortable, and best believe I was sweating. As we pulled up to the first few stations I wasn’t too concerned as they were smaller stations that not too many people went to. Then we stop at Kerava. It was the halfway point to which A TON of people get on and off. Sitting on the left side of the train was the worst because the doors opened on the right side, hence, I couldn’t see if any of the conductors were getting on so I could bail if I had to. What made the stop at Kerava worse, the train stopped for almost 3 minutes in contrast to the minute or so like the other stations. You may be thinking, “Omarr, move to the other side of the train so you can see who is getting on.” Right. Wrong. When I got on the train in Hyvinkaa, many other people were with me and many of the seats were taken especially the windows.

Finally, the train pulled out of the station and I was half there, until Pasila. Pasila is another larger station where the trains take a little bit long er to leave. Actually, to think of it, Pasila took the longest due to the fact that it was directly underneath a GINORMOUS mall filled with mall rats hanging out, roaming around, and doing whatever. The good part, no conductors and on my way to my final stop. As I exited the train in Helsinki at 10.30a, that gave me 10 minutes to make it to my appointment. The rain was like a WW2 bomb attack in Germany as the rain pounded on everything under the sky. I decided to run to Kaampi, the mall where my doctor’s appointment was located. As I entered the building I started looking for the doctors. Up the escalator I went, my head turning frantically searching for the doctor’s office “Terveystalo.”

Up and down, left and right, I couldn’t find the sign anywhere, suddenly I see a young lady already searching on her phone and politely ask her to help me find the address. She kindly shows me her phone and points to the doctors office on her phone. Unfortunately, she turned the map around on her phone so I had to ask her which direction was the doctors’. As she looked at me with a simpathetic smile she softely said, “I don’t know” then continued, “…but, it looks like it is close to the movie theatre.” So I looked on the map and noticed I had to make a right than a left, so I thanked her kindly and started to run to my destination. REMEMBER, right than left! When I got to where I should have been I noticed the street and location were not where I was supposed to be and began to run to the right as it looked like it would circle back to where I was.

It was now 10.40a and I was officially late which Finns don’t really like. Somewhat wet and a little frustrated I quickly walked into another shopping to ask a gentleman for help. As I approached the large man and asked for his assistants, he asked for my phone which I stated that I lost it previously. He took out his phone and explained I was 5 minutes away than step by step stated where I had to go. Smiling, I thank him graciously and stormed back into the rain towards my goal. Running as fast as I could across the street thru the plaza where my search began I slowed down to find Terveystalo directly in front of me. As I approached the building I looked to my left and saw the door I previously ran out of after the young lady tried to help me then noticed and shouted in my head, ” WAIT…this is where I was 10 minutes ago.” I took a quick look backwards and realized that I was looking in the opposite direction to where I made my first mistake of taking a right than left which means I could have been to my appointment 5 minutes early instead of 10 minutes late. Letting go of the small mistake, I took the escalator up to the office and found myself even more lost than I was before I stepped on the escalator.

I found myself inside what looked like a hospital instead of a doctors office; hundreds of people everywhere walking in and out of one of five large sliding doors; two on each side of me and one at the very end. Terveystalo signs everywhere. I walked into the first door to my left which looked like a checkin counter but couldn’t find the kiosk to grab a paper number and wait to be called. I then walked back into the main hallway and looked around only to realize that there were three more floors. Confused, I walked back inside, searched around, then found and pulled a ticket. at 10.55 my number was called. I checked in and made it upstairs to the doctors office.

Normally in America we would knock on the door to let them know we are there, but in Finland, nah! You have a seat outside of the door and wait. So I waited, and waited, and waited. After about 5 minutes while two or three nurses passed, I decided to look for a nurses station to which there was none. I had no idea where this doctor was. So I wait another 5 mins and then a white haired lady opened the door and said, “Mr. Oree?” Finally, I something was going right! After my appointment I picked up my prescription and head back home. This time, I bought a ticket before I got on the train. My mind was beginning to calm down and began creating ideas about how I could either find my phone, get a new phone, or replace my phone with another device.

The next day I spent working on other projects and walked around to keep my mind from racing, but I felt upset notheless. The next day I woke up and set on the couch to let my ideas formulate as to how I was going to get my phone back. I walked over to the nearest and only shopping mall in Hyvinkaa to look into replacing my phone. After speaking with the first sales associate, he explained that they didn’t have any phones that would work outside of Finland. Went to another store and the second teller confirmed what the first person told me; he didn’t not have any international plans and in fact, NO phone provider has a plan that works outside of Finland. In other words, I was SOL (s@#t out of luck). Next plan, try to recover all of my communication apps on my computer. NOPE…As I got home, I remembered that my computer was disabled and wouldn’t allow me to log in. Again, S.O.L! Last resort, buy another device from Giganti (the Finnish Best Buy and an awesome store).

I walked down to Giganti and bought the best and cheapest tablet that they had and returned home to retreive all of my passwords and hopefully get my life sorted. One problem though, when I started to add all of my emails they were all set to a two step verification process. One of the steps was to hit “yes” on my phone, damn it!

I started the recovery process and after about two hours managed to either change or recover four of my nine email accounts that I would need. The most important was about an hour and a half of the work, but it was worth it. I could finally send messages to my mom and communicate with Mari again. But, as I was scrolling through the settings of a particalar account, I noticed that several of my desktop and broken laptop were registered under “Find my Phone” along with others. I clicked on “see more” and there it was…my phone! Surprised, I clicked on my phone and saw a round circle hovering over Hyvinkaa. With my head tilted to the side I lowered my eyes and saw the last known registered timestamp was the night before at 11.08p and my phone had 8% battery left. Quickly I stood up, put on my jacket and headed to the information desk at the mall where the blue circled hovered over on my new tablet.

Smiling bright, I pessimistically thought, “there is no way my phone lasted an entire day out in the rain without getting damaged?” But it said that the phone was fine the night before at 11.08p so it should be at least running. I couldn’t help feeling a huge sense of relief and happiness of hope to know that my phone could be ok, but it could have been nothing. I approached the desk and asked the nice lady if a phone had been turned in. Softly she asked me to descibe the phone , and after I did she walked to the backroom. With the door open I could see her turning on whatever phone was in her hand. My eyes dropped to the floor waiting when I hear, “is this your phone?” THERE IT WAS…without a scratch as if I had handed it to her five seconds before. I asked her if she knew how it got here and she replied a customer had dropped it off the previous day!

Walking home I wasn’t happy only because I had my phone back, more importantly, it was because I felt like I mattered, belonged, and respected. As you can tell, it is hard to describe but I felt like I was in a country where people cared about me because I was someone…period! Think about it, here was someone who didn’t know who I was, what I stood for, or anything about me, but they thought enough of my property to take it somewhere so I could find it. It was such an amazing feeling unlike I have ever experienced and it only made me love Finland even more. When I told my friend Mari (who is Finnish), she said in Finland we believe, “if it isn’t yours, don’t touch it.”

Since my arrival to Finland, everything about me has been at peace…mind, body, and soul except for those 40 something hours when my phone was gone. But, once I had time to process what actually happened, it only confirmed even more that Finland is the happiest place on earth for a reason; peace, quiet, and respect. Can it get any better than that? If you ever want to know what it feels like to be you I couldn’t suggest a better place to visit than Finland. So, get your bags packed as soon as possible and come on over. Just make sure to hold onto your phone. If you loose it and start stressing, tell those worries to KICK ROCKS because most likely someone will leave it for you to follow. Until the story don’t forget to be here in the moment because the journey is always worth more than the destination. Otherwise you wouldn’t get wild stories like this!

Bon voyage

#Overcome #Expereice #Life #Mental #Paradise #Technology