Photo by Marina Pascucci. This is the second of a three-blog series on Finland. Today: A fellow American expat in Helsinki. I met mine here in dark, cold Finland just before Christmas. But compare our life stories and we are looking at each other in the mirror. We both:.
Like myself, he did a full-body nosedive into the culture. All you Republicans who equate socialism with the demise of civilization, please read on. We met at Mikkeller Bar, a cozy, neighborhood joint selling tasty Finnish craft beer for euros, depending on the size, and more moderately priced than the more larcenous Nordic nations.
Marina and I had arrived the night before and spent a fabulous day touring the Finnish capital. Traffic is minimal. So is poverty. Homelessness is non-existent. You think it rains pixie dust. Helsinki, with a population of ,, is cheaper than Oslo , calmer than Reykjavik and safer than Stockholm.
We strolled through its quaint Christmas market on the harbor, sampling local jelly candies and jams and wondering if we could ever use reindeer-wool gloves in Rome. We had delicious salmon soup, a Finnish diet staple, in Market Hall, since a Helsinki landmark for local foods and hot coffee on cold days. It had hardly changed since my only other visit to Finland in It was a relatively mild 37 degrees with a cold breeze coming off the Gulf of Finland.
Finns look attractive even in stocking caps. Michael is big and burly with a big mop of curly hair. We had never met despite covering the same events over the years. However, we both got burned out on sports writing about the same time in I retired from The Denver Post on Jan. He later fulfilled a long-time dream of living in New York and getting his masters by studying journalism at Columbia where he met his girlfriend, Nina, who also attended. Her student visa ran out in and she got a job in Helsinki.
