Crystal asked me to have a seat at her desk in the lobby. Tall, slender, and stoic, she was a classic woman, as if she’d been cut out of a 1970’s fashion magazine featuring clothing by Halston. Mid fifties with grey hair that was coiffed into place like a helmet, dark rimmed glasses and perfect skin. She was one of two concierges at the hotel where I stayed.
I’d since brought over a large suitcase that I kept in storage at the hotel that contained all the extras that I couldn’t pack every week. I kept a suit and tie for special occasions. I had speakers for my CD player so Tuomo and I could listen to music in my room. Candles for baths. A couple of pairs of shoes – seasonal things that I’d swap out as the weather changed. I was waiting for my suitcase when she called me over to her desk.
“Are you a member of the Six Continent’s Club?” she asked? It was the loyalty program for the hotel.
“I don’t pay for these rooms,” I told her.
Crystal leaned over the desk and said quietly, “No one who stays here pays for their room.”
“In that case, sign me up!”
Had she asked me that a year ago I would have amassed enough loyalty points to have had a limousine take me anywhere I wanted which would have been very convenient during the transit strikes – but for now, anyway, it meant being upgraded to a junior suite each day I arrived. She and the other concierge, Mia had always gone out of their way to ensure I was well taken care of during my stays. Now, however, I was specifically their guest.
When I was reading a book by a Finnish author, Mia asked if I wanted to meet them – she said she’d make the arrangements. Another time she had copies of Jari Sillanpää’s new CD delivered to the hotel when I couldn’t find it in the shops downtown. She’d arrange tickets for me if there was something I wanted to see in town.
It was now over a year and life in Helsinki was better than the life I had lived anywhere else up until this point. I knew shopkeepers, bartenders, waiters, bus drivers, and taxi drivers. There were days when bus drivers would honk and wave when they saw me out and about – which I secretly loved.
It also didn’t take long for Sinikka and I to figure out who the next CEO of Finnair was going to be. Rumor was – and she and I were able to confirm it, a man who’d been running a candy company in The Netherlands had been chosen. His name was Keijo Suila. Helsinki is a very small city where there’s one degree of separation from just about anyone. Sinikka’s connections from the past and my connections to just about everyone else made getting information easy. Our coffee time together grew more interesting week by week.
I continued with my plan for updating the corporate culture at Finnair – with Tuomo being one of my biggest critics. “It simply won’t work,” he’d tell me. “You’re not from here and you don’t understand the cultural differences.”
He was correct – I wasn’t able to grasp all the nuances but I also knew that I would be making my appeal to a business man who would understand the need to compete on an international level.
Tuomo was working on a project that was designed to convert pension payments into euros when it replaced the mark as currency in January of the next year. He told me over dinner one night that the project was destined to fail. I asked why. He told me that the new system was being built atop the old system which was unstable as it was and that adding new code to it would essential crash it. “We’ve already spent the equivalent of $5,000,000 on this – and it’s not going to work.”
“Have you told anyone about this?” I asked. He said he hadn’t. I asked him why?
“I can’t stand up in a meeting and say that,” he said. “I’d be laughed out of the room.”
“What’s worse,” I questioned. “Being laughed out of a room and being right or spending millions on something that is bound to fail?” We went back and forth on this all night – Tuomo convinced that it was not his place to recommend terminating the project and build something new from the ground up. Throughout the conversation I could see the angst building inside of him. Finnish culture was not one that encouraged or rewarded debate – and certainly not in a corporate environment.
Over the next couple of weeks and unbeknownst to me was that he’d gained the courage to do this. He scheduled a meeting with his boss and explained his position. It was a few weeks later that Tuomo told me about the meeting. It had gone so well and was so well received that Tuomo was promoted to head up the new project and given a considerable pay increase. I was so proud of him – and he himself appeared to be energized in a way that I’d never seen in him previously.
This wasn’t the only change taking place in Tuomo’s life at the time.
There was one morning when he left the hotel, when I walked to the window to wave good bye to him that he didn’t turn around to wave back. I called his phone and he didn’t answer. I left a message. He didn’t return it. When I got back to New York I sent him an email – I’d purchased a computer by this time to make our communications easier. He didn’t reply.
Eventually he did, asking that we meet upon my return. It must have been that we met at a little bar near his home – a place that we usually visited to have quiet conversations. With the utmost tact and decorum, Tuomo explained to me that the man with whom he lived, Timo, had been his lover of ten plus years and that he was still in love with him.
My fingers cease typing this as much as my face went blank when he told me that. I was in utter shock because it wasn’t that long ago that he suggested we find a bigger apartment for ‘us’. I questioned him about this.
Tuomo went on to say that he and Timo had agreed to a separation of sorts even though they remained living together. This was not uncommon – remaining roommates with someone despite major changes. Helsinki faced a tremendous housing shortage and prices in city were such that moving out without a comprehensive long-term plan was cost prohibitive. I knew a number of people who were stuck in an arrangement like this.
The good part about this is that we were able to address the situation in a level-headed adult manner. I couldn’t blame him for any of this. He had attempted to make an honest change in his life and decided that he felt one way rather than another. Yes, I was devastated – completely devastated because my life was transitioning towards living and working full time in Finland and his assistance with this was going to make things easier.
Tuomo said he’d still support whatever I needed for this – that his commitment to helping me wouldn’t change. I believed him and though I wasn’t fond of a life in Finland with his daily absence, I had bigger things ahead of me.
The next morning when I was getting ready for work I had the television on listening to the morning news. The news on Finnish television is not a thirty minute or sixty minute program, but rather occasional twenty minute scheduled interruptions throughout the day. From the bathroom I heard a voice on the TV, in English, that was unmistakably familiar.
A reporter from YLE, the Finnish news agency, was in Frankfurt doing a story on Deutsche Bahn’s decision to offer a Finnish menu in their dining cars that summer. This was hardly a newsworthy story it seemed, certainly no reason to pay to send a reporter to Frankfurt. I waked out of the bathroom, looked at the TV and saw the reporter was talking to Jurgen – who was offering information on the upcoming change.
What the fuck?
What were the chances that I’d have the television on and tuned to this station, that I’d be in Helsinki at the time of this broadcast and that my former German boyfriend was the person being interviewed? A universal effort had to have been in motion for this to occur a year after the summer in Germany. I called Jurgen immediately and left a message.
It was that morning that I adopted the belief that I was always in the right place at the right time – that wherever I was was exactly the place that I needed to be, even if I wasn’t fond of what was happening at the moment. Things would continue as it they were meant to be.
One month later I opened the door and pulled the newspaper in from the hallway like I had done every morning since being upgraded into junior suites. I brewed some coffee and browsed the headlines. In the business section I read something I’d not expected to read – ever. For one, the article was in Finnish, and for this I’d never expected to be so proficient in Finnish as to read it in its entirety. But secondly, I was utterly devastated by the news and shocked to have read about it in the Helsinki Sanomat rather than having heard about it first at work.
The headline read that Finnair had signed an agreement with American Airlines to become a One World member and thus leave the Delta agreement behind. I immediately called Atlanta to talk to a friend that worked with code-share agreements. Steve recognized the call was coming from Finland and knew it was me.
“We just heard about this here too,” he said when he answered the phone. “It was a breech of contract.” He went on to tell me that Delta was immediately ceasing the relationship with Finnair.
“How am I going to get home?” I asked him.
“Just go to work. If they ask you about anything, tell them you don’t know – and call me when you’re back in New York.”
When I reported for work at crew operations that day I was met by a member of Finnair management, a woman that I knew and with whom I had a great working relationship. She apologized profusely, saying that she wished I hadn’t learned about this in the way that I had. My crew was overly apologetic even though none of this was their decision.
Back in New York I called Steve. He told me that Delta would permit Finnair to use their gates and carry their passengers through the end of the month and that would also signal the end of the program for me. Starting in September, Finnair would move to American Airlines gates in New York.
With the same rate of acceleration as I had entered the program I had to prepare to leave it. The timing of the decision allowed me to get my transfer in back to Salt Lake City and eliminate the need for the New York apartment.
On my next trip over I stopped by the office of the woman who had met me earlier in the week. I asked her if I could write something for the next issue of the company magazine. I told her that I wanted to thank everyone at Finnair for what was one of the best experiences of my life. She welcomed the idea wholeheartedly.
I also spent that layover writing a letter to Timo, apologizing for what had happened – and expressing my sorrow for having been involved in something that must have been far more difficult for him than it was for me. My Finnish vocabulary certainly was not up to par for this letter but I managed through it.
Veikko called and asked when my last flight would be. I told him but asked him not to tell anyone. I didn’t want to go through a teary-eyed good bye with everyone. And it wasn’t that I was leaving for good – it was just that the frequency of my visits would change dramatically. I’d cast aside my plans for meeting with Keijo Suila – there was too much happening that required my immediate attention – getting all of my things from both Helsinki and New York back to Salt Lake City and transitioning back to domestic flying.
Somehow Mia and Crystal had found out when my last layover was scheduled and when I arrived that day I was upgraded to a full two-room suite and inside my room when I arrived was a bottle of champagne, a box of chocolates, and a card signed by everyone at the hotel. I cried then just as I am while typing this now.
It was a cozy room and really, the perfect place to hide away for twenty-four hours until my last flight with Finnair the next day. Veikko called around four that afternoon. I invited him to stop by if he wanted and attempted to lure with with the champagne. He encouraged me to come out for one last beer. I declined. He insisted.
When I met him at the tango bar everyone was there with him. The mechanics. Other Finnair crew members. Telephone operators, bus drivers, and bar tenders. Tuomo and Timo were there as well. It was both everything I didn’t want as well as everything that couldn’t have been better. We drank and danced and laughed and cried, and laughed some more. Timo was especially gracious – he and I had a private talk as best we could. He didn’t speak English but mustered enough to tell me that I shouldn’t feel bad for what had happened. He thanked me for the letter I had written.
My thank you letter to Finnair had been published and I was given a copy of the company magazine before boarding the flight. I’d quoted lyrics from the Abba song, “Knowing Me Knowing You. My crew had prepared a thank you card for me as well.
I had two suit cases with me – claimed them in New York and caught my commuter flight home to that evening. It was the end of an era.
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Every year for the subsequent ten years I spent time in Finland at least once a year, but now had to pay for the tickets, so I’d go in the winter when prices were lower. I still knew the folks working at JFK and they always gave me a pass to the Blue Wings Lounge where I could wait in a more private space for departure. I kept my bank account so I’d have money when I got there and kept my Finnish telephone number as well.
Tuomo and Timo had since moved to a large five bedroom house in the country that sat on acres of land. On occasion I’d stay with them. Other times, I’d stay at the home of a former Finnair colleague. Sometimes I’d run into someone I knew in Helsinki. Sometimes not. Things change.
In 2008, exactly ten years after my last flight on Finnair I was at the Helsinki airport and ascended the escalators to check in for my flight back to the States. Walking through the terminal I literally bumped in to Keijo Suila. My left shoulder butting against his right shoulder.
“I am so……oh hi. Hello!” I said to him in the familiar tense. I think he was as surprised by this as I was – because he had no idea who I was, speaking to him in a familiar sense, but I knew everything about him. “Good to see you,” I said looking him first in the eyes, and then continuing on my way.
I was exactly where I needed to be.
On the flight home I pondered this. There was every reason for Keijo Suila to know me that morning – but I had ditched the plan that I had been working on for so long, and therefore I was a stranger to him. It was self-doubt for thinking it wouldn’t work. And maybe it was self-sabotage for fear that it would have worked and I’d have been confronted with a life change bigger than anything. But even if it hadn’t worked, our exchange that morning at the airport would have been entirely different had I pursued my idea.
I had eight hours to ponder this. I decided that day to always pursue my plans despite any perceived logistical or fanciful hurdles.
I wanted more familiar conversions with more people that I’d yet to meet.
The 36 Broadway 
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