Finland, March 1, 1999
Blanket of White
Some wild days are spent in a white daze
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The whiteness is amazing. All I can see out of the train
window is snow. I'm on my way to Helsinki (again), and I'm using the
electrical outlets in the restaurant car for something I know they were
not designed for, my laptop. Think, ten years ago, I would not be on
this train, well maybe, but definitely not with a laptop, especially one
full of photos from Russia.
I'm not really sure why these plugs are here, its an odd place to put them. Since our cabins do not have outlets, but the hallways and restaurant car does, it leaves me to believe that the Soviets were far-sighted enough to install plugs, but they wanted their use to be easily controlled. There are black blobs streaking past in the whiteness, trees, dachas, and farms. I can tell instantly, just by a glance at one of the dachas, which side of the border we are on. Right now, with fresh paint and good roofs, I know its Finland. Of course, I also know because at both sides of the border, I was woken up for the passport and customs checks. After the Russians are done with their Orwellian checks, looking under the seats and behind baggage for stowaways, the train crosses the actual border, sans guards. Guess they don't want the guards to be tempted to stay on the other side. I studied the crossing this morning, and the Russians have an interesting design. They have a border fence, then a no-man's land, then another border fence, designed to my eye as more of a system to keep Russians in than Finns out. Oh, yeah, another way to tell what side of the border we are on. The Finnish kids are rich enough to afford spray paint for their graffiti. Russian kids use markers. Unlike A Sumoi Sunday, I am not headed to Helsinki for a weekend of fun. I'm going up to have orthoscopic surgery on my knee. I think I tore the meniscus (the ball of jelly between the thigh and shinbones that is a mini shock absorber), and its making my knee swell up painfully when I walk a lot. Not a condition I want to have as I walk across Asia in two months! I'm not sure what the doctors will find when they go exploring, and I'm kinda nervous they will find something really wrong with my knee, but I gotta get it fixed, I don't like being a gimp. Since this is the 90's and all, I get to watch what they are doing on my own mini-TV. Coming soon: Wayan's Knee Op MPEG movie! I know ya'll want to download that! It is not all for health that I go though. Come on! It doesn't take much to get me to leave work for a week to travel to the west! I'm also gonna check in on my good friend Erika, who I traveled to Poland and the Baltics with in 1996 when I visited Russia for the first time. She has made quite a life for herself in this cold land. She's doing cutting-edge testing on concrete samples at a Finnish institute that is the EU center on this specialty, and she has a good man who is very worthy of her time and effort. Kinda makes my wandering self a bit envious! I should be meeting up with Susanna too. She is a Finnish veterinarian student I know in Helsinki who I met through Erika when I came here in September 98. As one who sees blood and guts on a regular basis, she laughed when I told her I was scared about the surgery. She said that I had no need to worry, I wasn't a horse, so the doctors wouldn't take me out back and shoot me! The snow is freezing on the window now, and my visibility is going from a few yards to a few feet. I like this blanket of white. Some days its good not to see too far ahead, the immediate future isn't all that amazing all the time. After this week of scalpels and blood, I still have two months to move my work responsibilities to my staff, wrap up my social engagements, and split town. Two long months. I like a blanket of white. |
