I don’t always like living in Helsinki, but I do love my home. I’m not quite sure why. There’s nothing particularly special about it—just your regular one-bedroom apartment but for the fact that the bedroom doesn’t actually have a door. This was a feature that I first noticed when I went to slam said door as Valtteri was unwinding an entire role of painter’s tape while I was taking a conference call.
“Where’s the door?” I demanded, muting my line and ducking my head around the corner as if I would find it in the hallway.
“No door,” he mouthed back. It was the first of many quirks about our apartment that we managed to overlook during the viewing process and then learned to look past in all the days that followed.
I suppose the appeal of the apartment is mostly sentimental, which is a quality I’m not known for. This is the first place I settled since living in New York. The first place that Valtteri and I officially lived together. It’s where I started my business. Where we celebrated our wedding day. Where we brought Bravo home and taught him everything he knows.
You pack four walls with enough positive memories and suddenly you can overlook just about anything, up to and including a missing bedroom door.
I’ve never been one for “things,” but another lesson I’ve learned is that it’s impossible to live in a place and not fill it up. Our apartment is no exception. In fact, since I had the good fortune to sign our lease at the exact same time my former employer handed me a fairly generous severance package, I decided to put the money to use buying the things I always wanted for the life I only dreamed of.
A deep-seat sofa that accommodates eight.
Handmade stoneware plates from Portugal.
A Dyson Airwrap in hot pink.
From Hank’s hands to my shelves, so the check was spent.
Valtteri and I went about making our house a home in deliberate, sometimes painstaking detail. We hand-picked every last item—each chair, each hook, every houseplant. We are by no means done decorating, but even still, the place feels like home to both of us.
When people come through our door, they see as much. Our apartment is exactly as you would picture it to look—a mash up of two different but equally interesting points of view, all jammed into 50 square meters. You can see Valtteri in the record collection and a tower of art books. My style is captured by an excessive amount of mirrors and a French deco bureau. You can tell that we are married by the ten-speed Kitchenaid stand mixer.
It’s the place I planned to stay many years. Until our landlord decided to sell it.
I have heard through the grapevine that the real estate market in the States is simply unbelievable, with houses being sold sight unseen to bidders twenty or even thirty percent higher than the asking price.
Apparently, the same can be said for Helsinki, as evidenced by the fact that our landlord not only decided to sell the place without warning but also set the price several hundred thousand dollars above what I think anyone in their right mind would pay. (Technically, she offered to sell it to us, but, as someone in her right mind, I declined to buy. Here’s the listing, if you’re curious.)
And so now, Valtteri and I are in the unenviable position of trying to find a new apartment that will also accommodate The World’s Largest Sofaä and our pet Velociraptor, all while a stream of real estate agents and buyers traipse through our door, opening all the closets and peaking in the cupboards.
Apartment hunting in Helsinki is a bit different from New York, in that most of the real estate agencies arrange a viewing for each unit for one applicant at a time. There are no mass showings where hordes of people turn up with a file full of canceled checks and a credit report; no backroom conversations where someone whispers that they are willing to throw an extra hundred or two on top to jump the line; no bidding wars started by a guy from Brooklyn who is representing a guy from California who only wants an apartment in SoHo to store his East Coast shoe collection.
None of that—at least not yet. Part of me is impressed with the honesty and fairness of it all. The other part of me, the part that likes to solve problems with my check book, is a little aggravated that my dinosaur and I have to wait in line.
There is yet another part of me that is tempted to turn this minor upheaval into a true-blue earthquake. My landlord ripped the rug out from under me and now I am left staring at the bare floor, wondering if it’s worth keeping.
Finland is a lovely place and Helsinki is a wonderful city. But the weather is cold and the culture is downright frigid. Most of Valtteri’s friends now have young children, so we see them infrequently and briefly. I find myself, once again, having outgrown my social circle, the only one left orbiting an empty room.
Since I am being forced to move, I have half a mind to go somewhere I want to be—somewhere with a beach or mountains or both. A place where the spoken language is rooted in Latin and the tax rate does not approach 50%. A city where the weather allows people to spend time outdoors and those people actually leave their homes and talk to one another. I’d like to go to a place where I am inspired to spend my time in a way that does not alternate between sleeping, working and complaining about the weather forecast.
I have been to places like that—places where I wasn’t just living, but actually felt alive. It is hard to explain the distinction to my husband, even after spending six months in Venice, where we both lived life to the absolute fullest.
Sadly, that life is beyond reach, at least for a few more years until Valtteri finishes his masters’ degree. And that’s a door I am very eager to close.
Sounds like you’re on the precipice of another amazing adventure – even if it’s not an adventure you had intended on taking just yet.
And I can confirm: The real estate market here in the States is offensive right now.
Ha! very true. Sometimes unintentional adventures are the best… although i could do without the drama of high real estate prices. xx
I am both envious of your forced move and horrified at the thought. New beginnings are always fun (no, really) but the “have to” part of that is a hassle. And yes, housing and rental markets in the US are insane.
i agree! i actually don’t mind change, but i prefer when it’s my idea and it also helps when your idea comes from a place of happy possibility (i want to XX) versus a last-ditch preservation (if i don’t x, then i will just lose my mind!) what i am watching out for during my time in helsinki is to never get to the latter… because blowing up my life in new york ended up being a great decision, but i don’t necessarily want to repeat the exercise.
as always, thanks for reading. xx