As it happened, two years earlier Delta Air Lines had purchased the transatlantic routes from Pan Am and in fact, I could now fly to Helsinki for free (In 1987 Delta purchased Western Airlines). We worked out the details and a few weeks later I was on my way to Helsinki after a ten year absence.
With the reestablished friendship in place I began flying over to Helsinki a few times a year. In 1995 Delta ceased it’s flights and instead partnered with Finnair in a code-share agreement. There was simply no need to fly two wide-body aircraft to and from Helsinki at the same time each day. My fall visit to Helsinki that year was on Finnair.
In 1983 when I traveled to Finland for the summer the last leg of my journey was a thirty minute flight from Stockholm to Helsinki. I was in first class on that flight – it was the only ticket available. I could go on and on – but simply put, I’d never seen or felt anything as luxurious as what I’d experienced on that very short flight. The glassware. The upholstery. The plate of something – likely salmon, a sliver of reindeer meat, blue cheese and some pickles was beautifully presented and served. The sheer graciousness of it all. As I sat there in awe I said to myself, ‘I want to work here.’
I was smiling from ear to ear being back on Finnair after all these year. There was a Delta flight attendant assigned to the route and she stopped by to greet me and say hello. We talked shop for a bit and that was that.
As I became more familiar with passing through JFK and the process of flying for free on another airline I starting going to Helsinki more often and occasionally taking the train up north to region where I’d spent my summer after high school.
The town I lived in was Lapua but the nearest train station was Seinäjoki – a four hour ride heading north out of Helsinki. Seinäjoki was where were went to have serious fun. With a population of 42,000 it had movie theaters, nice shops and restaurants, and a disco. This, compared to Lapua with 14,000 people and two bars, one of which was owned by Centrum, a Soviet enterprise that was off limits – until everyone was drunk and then suddenly it was okay to go to Centrum.
A friend from that summer after high school, Tuire, picked me up at the train station and we made our way to a bar across the street to catch up. It’d been thirteen years since we’d seen one another.
The train station was crowded, the streets were crowded and while it had been thirteen years, I did not expect Seinäjoki to have grown such that the streets would be wall to wall people – saying exactly this to Tuire.
“It’s the Tango Festival,” she said. “Everyone is here for the Tango Festival.” She went on to tell me that this year’s tango king was a handsome young man – the young part, well, and the handsome part, being quite unusual, and hence the larger than expected turn out. From a street vendor I picked up a CD of this guy, Jari Sillanpää. He and I were the same age and here he was, a national treasure at age thirty-one.
After a few beers we went back to her place for dinner and then got ready to head back into town to spend the night at the new disco that had opened in a rather nice hotel.
Tuire has always been the wild one. Well educated and street smart. Well traveled. Very grounded, but also very willing to try something new. That night to the disco she wore knee high leather boots, a black mini skirt, and a white cashmere off the shoulder sweater. With a blunt cut bob and thin horizontal glasses …. a total bombshell. Women in Helsinki may have dressed like this for some special gala, but up here, this far north, no.
Maybe it was just that she and I were back together, but the evening couldn’t have been better. There was a fog on the dance floor, excellent sequenced lighting, music we both liked. We danced, drank, and danced some more. After a few I excused myself to use the washroom. In there were two other guys that didn’t hear me enter. They were talking about Tuire.
“I’d sure like to see the woman’s pussy,” one of them said in English to his buddy, who eagerly agreed.
“She’s a friend of mine,” I said out loud.
And then silence. These two young men did not expect to be overheard and certainly did not expect to hear a response in American English. “And,” I went on, “If you ask her nicely, she’ll show you.”
The young man who made the comment was Mike, an exchange student from Ohio that was living with a family in Lapua, where I had lived. Lanky. A bit awkward. Thick curly dark hair atop his head that should have had a comb go though it but probably wouldn’t because it was so think. I introduced them both to Tuire. As it happened, she knew Mike’s host family.
Small towns.
And as it also happened, Tuire brought Mike home with us. She and Mike got it on in her room while I attempted to sleep on the sofa. The next morning Tuire called Mike’s host family to tell them that Mike had come back with us as it was too late for him to get all the way back to Lapua. Happy endings. All around.
On my flight back to New York I met Sinikka, another of the Delta flight attendants assigned to Finnair. I asked her how the staffing worked and she explained the details and said that all the Finnish nationals who had flown the route at Pan Am were now working the Finnair flights – one for each day of the week and four of whom were on standby specifically for these flights, for a total of eleven.
“I’d like to do this’, I told her.
“You won’t get in,” she said. “We bid on it every month. No one ever leaves and there are no open spots.”
“I’ll get in,” I replied.
“You won’t.”
“Yes I will.”
“You won’t.’
“I will.” And then we laughed.
All I wanted after this trip was to be back in Finland as often as possible. This seemed like a reasonable way to go about that.
In order to bid the Finnair flights I had to be based in New York. In order to be based in New York I had to put in a request to transfer two months in advance. The challenge was that I couldn’t really afford to live in New York, nor did I want to but like many others who were flying out of New York, I could commute. I didn’t necessarily have to move to New York, but I would have to find a place to stay in between flights.
There were scores of New York based flight attendants who commuted to New York and I started polling them on how to manage this. I weighed the pros and cons and the added costs. The increased pay for international flying would cover these costs. Still, I was undecided. There was no guarantee that I’d get a New York bid and even less of a chance, as Sinikka said, of getting into the Finnair program.
The deadline arrived for my transfer request and as I sat at the computer contemplating pushing the submit button, a colleague sat down next to me and asked what I was up to. I told him my dilemma. He looked me in the eye and said, “Do it. If you don’t like it, transfer back.”
He made it sound so simple. Startlingly simple. So with that I entered my transfer request.
The transfer was approved and the next step was to bid for a schedule. At the time, large books of available schedules were published in advance and distributed to everyone – each schedule assigned a specific numerical sequence. Like everyone, every month, in every base, I plotted the flights, destinations, days on and days off, and listed in preferential order which schedule you’d like to have. The entire bidding process took two weeks. Schedules were awarded in order of seniority.
My first choice was a Finnair schedule. Followed by our own flights to Warsaw. After that I didn’t really care. I figured if I didn’t get Helsinki I could at least explore Poland where my mother’s family had come from.
The month leading up to this was a frenzy of activity. In order to fly out of New York I had to have a Russian visa and the easiest way to obtain one was to go to the Russian consulate in Los Angeles so I picked up a trip to Los Angeles that had a layover long enough to get this wrapped up. There was still the need to find a place to stay.
That’s when I ran into Alan. I’d met Alan within the first years of living in Salt Lake. He was the roommate of a friend of a friend. Handsome man. Well groomed. Blonde, with blonde chest hair and furry blonde forearms. Former missionary. Former military. Soft spoken. I’d always swooned over Alan.
Alan was hired by Delta because he was a Swedish speaker which he learned before going on his mission. We’d bump into one another in the crew lounge or in an airport somewhere from time to time. He’d recently moved to New York to fly the Stockholm flights. When I told Alan that I had bid on the Finnair flights, he suggested I stay with he and his roommate Chris. They had a place together in Hell’s Kitchen, just off Times Square, a one bedroom they shared.
Alan said that he and Chris had talked about getting another roommate to help defray the costs. He went on to say that as German speaker, Chris and he were seldom there together and that it’d be highly unlikely that the three of us would ever be there at the same time.
“It’ll be perfect,” he said. Having known Alan for years, I agreed – it would be perfect.
On the fourteenth of every month the next month’s flying scheduled was published in a large book in each crew lounge. I called Scheduling and asked for my bid award.
My award – a Finnair schedule.
I got in.
I was in shock. Not only had I been awarded a Finnair spot, I was in fact awarded a senior slot which meant I’d be flying there weekly rather than being one of the reserve flight attendants who filled in during an absence – which was seldom, if ever. One of the Finnish nationals had forgotten to bid – and I bumped her out of the system.
Next up was being scheduled for training at Finnair because in addition to maintaining my FAA qualifications I had to obtain CAA qualifications, the European equivalent. It all happened so fast and it wasn’t long after that I was back on my way to Helsinki for a week’s stay.
Alan mailed me a key to the apartment in New York and I arrived there on a day when both he and Chris were flying. After the subway ride from JFK, and passing through Times Square on foot pulling a suitcase and carry on bag, I arrived at the stated address and immediately wondered if I had made the wrong decision.
Hell’s Kitchen at the time was one of the least expensive areas in New York to live – precisely because it was one of the least desirable places. Old walk-up buildings in bad repair. Cramped littered streets with traffic and noise. I peered in through the front door of the building first, calculating my risks and then stepped in to an old narrow tiled lobby with a steep narrow staircase – and lit by a single fluorescent tube hung from the ceiling.
Inside and up four flights I found a tidy apartment which had been recently renovated. Up front, a bedroom with two beds and two windows screened with steel grates, out to a fire escape. In the back, a white tiled kitchen and bathroom, each with a window. And in the middle a living room with bookshelves, desk, television, a window into a light well that looked into the brick wall of the building next door, and a big orange velvet sofa and coffee table. Everything was in it’s place – I’d expect that from Alan, but the sofa… The sofa reminded me of that the over exuberant aunt at a family function – odd looking but pretty in her own way, zaftig and somewhat out of place, but the hug she’d always give you – it felt so good.
The 36 Broadway 
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