Photos & Words

We are now travelling again East. We left Tampere this morning and searched for some time for National Road 6. On the exit from town we passed the hospital where Venla was born.

We travel and travel. The girls are getting tired of the car and of changing place every day or second day. But they are good and continue with their strange way of communicating in Finnish with the mother and English among themselves. We tell Olga to use Finnish with her sister but she replies that Venla does not know enough Finnish. And she is right. As for me. Italian has been abandoned many kilometres ago, in the Philippines. But I do not give up: speak to them in Italian and get replies in English. This is how our little family works.

This part of Finland is quite dull. Flat with just few very very low hills. Fields. Patches of forest and, what is quite surprising, no lakes. It rains. The national road is very quiet for Vietnamese standards, but with some traffic for Finnish ones. These are trucks travelling to Russia. Transporting goods or maybe returning empty after a delivery in Finland. There are also Russian cars. Mainly big ones such as Volvo four wheel drives.

When I was young I wanted to become a lorry driver and drive across Europe. I remember looking with admiration at the German drivers who used to bring their huge trucks full of cattle in our farm house or Catello, the Italian driver who worked a lot for our family with his huge Iveco travelling one week to day to Sicily and the next to Hamburg. As it turns out I have a job a like which is making me travel much further than the European borders.

We pass Lahti. Then Reach Kouvola and stop for a coffee which turns out to be a full typical Finnish meal with smoked salmon. I walk in the garden with Olga and she discover a mini wooden house for kids. It was used by the two cousins of Katja who live here.  A dream toy for Olga. She ventures in and soon she opens the door and with her head out asks me: papa’ do you want to play restaurant game?

I sit on a mini-chair and make my order: coffee with mil and pulla. Olga goes back in and I hear her starting to put a imaginary cattle on the stove.  I look at the garden and notice a bush with kind of Asian plants with rain drops resting on the long still green leaves. I think about the road we travel and those lorries.  Maybe this trip is turning also into a trip into memories, at least for me.

We are in Jyväskylä, the tow where Katja and me lived about 10 years ago. Before Olga came to us. We visit Katja grand mother and are here for two nights. I take the chance and go for a long run as I want to visit the area  where we used to live and Laajavuori and its intricate web of walking paths in the summer and cross country ski tracks in the winter.

I am never sure about visit a place where I used to live earlier on. Not only one realizes how fast time go, but at the time it is a bit like looking at images in a photo album where I am not really the same person I am now.

I leave from mummi home and follow the lake. Past behind the high rise Alvar Aalto designed about 50 years ago. The memory become clearer as I recognize the paths I used to run. Here is the the ice hockey ring where I played foot ball one summer and broke my right knee cruxiat ligament after an insane attempt to get an unreachable ball. I was operated in this town by Prof. Kiviranta who did a very good job. I am running smoothly and my right knee is strong.

I am on the other side of the lake . Climb up to Vioinmankatu where we used to live. Give just a glance to the block house and turn right to reach Laajavuori which is about 3 km away. We lived in small flat which seem so large in my memories. Our first home. My first real home after some years of student accommodations and temporary housing working in the Basque country and Cambodia.

I reach the hill of Laajavuori and enter the forest. Find it easy to follow the paths I used to run. I looked at the watch. I am already running 40 minutes. I know now it will be  along run to get back to mummo house.

I reach the top of the hill which in the winter is a down hill ski centre. I look west. Only forest. Hill after hill after hill. They look like green waves with touches of yellow on the top of the birch trees. I look east. The town Its white houses. The university campus divided by the lake.  A modern bridge linking the humanities on one side to the physics and the nuclear accelerator on the other side.

It is windy up here. Better to start running back climbing slowly down from this hill.

The main difference this year compared to other years is the silence that surrounds our mökki. Actually this is not correct. There is a noise and is is the one of the wind. But that’s it. No others. This is particularly evident at the sunset, the twilight which lasts until about ten in the evening. This is the sauna time. So when walking to the sauna to the lake shore. I look at the still water which is like a mirror when there is no wind. So clear is the image of the clouds reflected in the water that it is difficult to distinguish what is up and what is down. I stand there enjoying the cool air of the early Finnish autumn and there is not a sound. Something is missing. Was is like this last year? We were here in July. Oh yes. Last year the birds where singing also at night (or the clear Scandinavian night). This year it is end of Augusta and most of them if not all have already flown away to migrate south.

It is a nice time of the year to be here. There is night. No mosquitoes. The air is fresh and cool. The birch trees have brushes of yellow on the highest branches. The rest is still green but will soon give away to the intense yellow of autumn birch trees while the leave on the top top will fly away blow away by the northern winds.

After 14 hours by plane and 5 hours by train for me to reach the red wooden house on the top of the Niinikumpu hill is always a special moment. We always arrive by car from the railway station which is about 10 km away. We enter the garden through two very old and high pine trees and see the house front door of the house. It more than 10 years now that I come here but it is always a special moment especially after such a long trip as from Asia. The only similar moment I can recall now is the first sip of a cold beer after a a very long track in the woods. Camping and wearing the same clothes for days. Washing in ice cold streams. reaching the destination and open a cold beer. The fist sip the one with the best taste. The same for me is to reach Niinikumpu. Then and there I leave work and all the rest behind me. Some pictures of Niinikumpu can be found below in the Finland Out of Focus.

Mi sento un po’ come uno dei personaggi di un racconto di Haruki Murakami. Sono le 5:44 del mattino. Mi giro e rigiro da un po’ nel letto senza successo: il sonno se ne e’ andato. Il fuso orario che non si e’ ancora adeguato all’Europa. I pensieri. Non so.  Mi alzo. Metto l’orologio al polso. Cammino sulla punta dei piedi per evitare che il pavimento di legno scricchioli troppo e svegli Venla.

Scendo in cucina. Guardo dalla finestra. Albeggia. La campagna e’  di un verde scuro ed intenso. Le betulle hanno i primi spruzzi gialli di autunno sui rami piu’ alti.

Apro la porta sul retro. Scendo in giardino. Tre, quattro scalini non di piu’. Il fiato si condensa in leggere nuvole di vapore e non riesco a ricordare l’ultima volta che mi e’ successo. Sono a piedi nudi sul legno della nuova terrazza che Jorma ha fatto costruire sull’erba. I pantaloni di cotone blu del pigiama fatti fare ad Hoi An. La T-shirt bianca comprata a Londra. Il legno e’ leggermente bagnato dalla rugiada. Respiro profondamente. Il cielo e’ di un bel blu freddo. Non una nuvola. Il sole ancora nascosto dietro ai pini verso est. Respiro di nuovo profondamente. Also le braccia. Curvo la schiena e inizio la mia serie di esercizi quotidiani: il Saluto al Sole (anche se mi accorgo su guardare verso sud, verso il lago che laggiu’ lontano costeggia questa piccola collina di Niinikumpu).

Rientro. Accendo la macchina del caffe’. Nel salotto si sente solo il ticchettio del vecchio orologio a pendolo. Katja e le bimbe dormono  ancora. Jorma e Mirja anche. Taglio il pane nero (come lo chiamavo da bambino). Prendo la marmella e il burro dal frigorifero. Il brontolio della macchina del caffé mi avvisa che é pronto. Sento il profumo salire dalla tazza. Accendo il laptop e, come sempre mi accade, penso se scrivere queste parole in inglese o in italiano. Oggi decido per l’italiano.