Sisu
Sisu
The Finns have a word. Sisu. It doesn’t have a direct translation, but the general idea is stoic resilience in the face of adversity. Toughness. Grit. Ganas. A stiff upper lip. Sticktoitiveness. A high motor. Not quitting. It’s something Finns take pride in. Some of them think that you cannot have sisu unless you are a Finn. At the risk of cultural appropriation, I think my family regularly has a lot of sisu.
In order to appreciate this story, you need to know that Amy and I have always gotten out a little over our skis when travelling. We try things that feel a bit beyond our capacity. We don’t give ourselves a lot of breaks. We book things one after another. We rely on our ability to think on our feet and navigate foreign systems. We do well under pressure. And things usually work out – even when they don’t. We’ve had cameras stolen, had our rental car battered by a hailstorm, left behind wallets and passports, missed trains, nearly missed ferries, had luggage go missing, gotten stuck in an airport for forty hours (with our kids) -- all of it. Some of those things had happy endings, some of them didn’t. But we worked through all of them and they all became fun stories for us to tell. So we’ve grown confident in our ability to make things work. Perhaps too confident.
When booking this trip we had a dilemma. It was financially only realistic to fly into Helsinki. We would be spending most of our time in Tampere, which is two hours train ride from Helsinki. And there was something we really wanted to go see in Turku, which is two hours by train from both Helsinki and Tampere – the three form a triangle.
The train took a bit longer than expected. That didn’t pose a problem because the kids were very entertained by the playcar.
But as it took longer and longer we looked at the map, and realized that the train route ran 95% of the way to Tampere before veering south and heading to Turku. They are doing serious renovation on the train station (rautatiasema) in Turku, and apparently on some of the rail lines too, so maybe the detour isn’t permanent. But the end result was that what seemed like a triangle actually was a rather long continuous route with Tampere in the middle. So we could have pretty easily dropped our stuff off. We still would have had to pay for an apartment we weren’t using for a few days, but we were starting to wonder if that might have been worth it. We had to change trains halfway. We were anxious about the transition because we only had five minutes to make the connection. But Finnish trains are reliable and punctual, and the platforms were right next to each other, so the actual change was easy – it only involved moving our luggage which was feeling mysteriously heavier each time we grabbed it. But we got on our new train and eventually we pulled into the Turku rautatiasema. Despite our fatigue, we had made it through the part of our trip that we were most worried about. Sisu.
Turku is one of the oldest cities in Finland, was the capitol whilst Finland was a part of the Kingdom of Sweden, and has a thriving University and cultural scene. We didn’t have time for any of that though, because we had about 15 minutes to get through town and catch a bus out to Naantali. The bus station was only about four blocks away. But first we needed to cross a skyway bridge to get across all of the railway tracks. And there was only one elevator up, and an extraordinarily long line for it. So we did the Claridge thing and decided to white knuckle it up the stairs. Carrying close to two hundred pounds worth of bags. And yeah it was really heavy. And yeah I am nursing a shoulder injury that my doctor can’t diagnose but generally attributes to my “advanced age” but I’ve got that deceptive old man strength bourn of exhaustion, depression, and gin. So I managed. And it was worth it to get us to the bus on time. Sisu.
We crossed two streets and only had two blocks left. That’s when we saw it. The hill. The first of the two blocks we had to get through was a towering hill with a beautiful cathedral on top. To get through the block we would have to climb nearly a hundred old stone steps. Hauling our bags – nearly 250 pounds – up each one. When we saw the hill Amy shouted “No!…” and I dramatically sighed “my God…” like we were in a disaster movie – like the characters say when they see the towering tidal wave. That hill was our tidal wave. We lumbered our way up, one stone step at a time. Clunk, clunk, clunk. Sisu, sisu, sisu. And then raced down the next block which was the downhill side, arriving at our bus just before it left. We had made it. Sisu.
Fun fact – on the way back we were dreading that hill. We had a bit more time and decided to see if there was some way around it. We found that if we had gone a block out of our way – in any direction – we would have avoided the hill altogether and remained on flat ground. But there would have been less sisu.
I am sure we were a welcome sight to our fellow bus passengers. We arrived sweaty with two kids and a million pieces of luggage. There was hardly any room on the bus so we sat in a cramped corner with our bags. Our kids promptly fell asleep for the whole ride, which guaranteed that it would be another long night.
Then we got off the bus, and I had to run two blocks to a K Market (more on them later) to use the Posti (ditto) and grab the key to our apartment. After that it was easy peasy. Just a mile and a half walk on dirt roads that our luggage wouldn’t roll on and two more hills later and we were there.
The kids responded to being awoken for another forced march with understandable despair. About halfway through Oscar was done walking, so we added his 40 pounds to the hundreds we were already carrying. And Oscar was crying. But that was okay because pretty much all of us were crying too. At one point a Finn pulled her car over and asked if we were okay, or if we needed help. Given that the Finns are slow to warm up, and never make conversation with strangers, I can surmise that she only stopped because it looked like we might be dying. She also pointed out several baskets of apples beside the road. She said in Finland when people have extra fruit from the harvest they set them out and anyone can take them. She seemed rather insistent that we take several apples, which again must have been a reflection of her concern for our well being. She then encouraged us to take a whole bag of apples. Which must either have been an attempt at enormous generosity, or perhaps her making fun of us. Because it should have been obvious to everyone that there was no way we could carry yet another bag of anything. But, it turns out the apples were exactly what we needed. Oscar ate an apple and immediately felt better and could walk again.
Once we got to our apartment, we needed to figure out what to do for dinner. Unfortunately most places around us were closed. The only places that were open were all the way back by the bus stop. But we didn’t have too much luggage to carry with us this time – and all of it was emotional in nature.
With full stomachs things started getting a bit better. We had a very pleasant walk back to our apartment.
We had things to look forward to the next day. And we had made it. We had proven that we could handle adversity. Our kids had shown that they were just as good as travelers as their parents – if not better. It wasn’t always pretty, but we all showed a lot of sisu.
Sisu.
Lapsillamme on paljon sisu
Our kids have a lot of sisu.
Hei
Hei
Comments
Post a Comment