moving to finland

A piece of advice: When traveling, do not take more suitcases than you have hands. Reasons: 1) You will look like the stereotypical American with too much stuff, 2) You will stand up for a four hour train ride because your luggage doesn’t fit in the overhead bins, 3) You will take two trips from the train station to your hotel to transport all your bags.

You know in the movies when someone is chasing someone else in the train station? The pursuer is on one side of the train tracks and the pursuee is on the other. Then the train comes. The pursuer stares at the other side, where the pursuee was standing, and as soon as the train passes the person has vanished. Well when we were moving all of our six bags and two backpacks across to the other side of the train tracks, that was the scenario. Since it is impossible to carry more bags than you have hands, Scott is taking two bags at a time down the stairs, through the underground tunnel, and up the other stairs to our platform. My job is to watch the two bags that he leaves there when he comes back to get two more. Then a train comes. In my head I am yelling at Scott to walk faster through the tunnel. My heart is racing. I am sending daggers with my eyes through the train to the spot where the bags were, in hopes that will deter them from disappearing, like on the movies. And it worked. The bags were magically still in the same spot when the train passed. Lesson learned: pack light.

On another note, there are a lot of trees in Finland. I mean like more than I’ve ever seen before. I did some serious tree-staring on the train ride to Joensuu.