Belonging in Places

Señorita has recently published two thought-provoking posts about heritage and music. I thought I’d combine these two and create my own random post about... well, we’ll see :) I’m as Finnish as a person can get, as far as I know my family has lived here for at least 500 years... so instead of worrying about my ancestors (they were a bunch of alcoholics and farmers), I am personally more concerned about belonging. 500 years of Finnishness does not help much when one doesn’t feel like home... Don’t get me wrong: this country is amazing. I just don’t feel much of a connection to these people. So, as some of you might now, I have spent most of my adult life travelling and looking for a place that’s mine. It feels like my life is a book where every new place is a chapter- and none of these chapters are related to each other. The pages are filled with heroes I will never see again, places that will never be the same if I’d one day return. It’s difficult to get all those pieces together so that they will create a continuous and somewhat logical story, also known as my life.

(does anyone else find it difficult to feel like they belong in their own country?)

And of course, every chapters has its own song.

Song1: spring 2000. End of school, beginning of 6th form/High School. This was a time when everything was possible, I felt so grown-up and omnipotent. Ah, that’s the sweetness of being a 16 year old girl.

 

Song2: 2003-04. Poland. Maybe the best year of my life. 8 months of everlasting partying and meeting new people. Every Thursday we used to meet up in a pub, and Joe the American would play this song for me. We got drunk on zubrowka, atlhough we were supposed to be good girls and keep the nuns happy. Just imagine being a non-catholic in a catholic halls of residence. Quite fun indeed.

Song3: UK... every Thursday we would share a bottle of bacardi, talk crap and listen to music. This one was on repeat (and it goes quite well with the rum.. :))

Song4: And then there was Moscow. Crazy times. A beautiful city where anything can happen. Red nights, lots of tea. Rich and poor. Golden domes. Lenin. Walking the same streets where all those geniuses once walked. Cabbage pie, jigsaw puzzles. Soviet champagne. The excitement of Alla Nikolayevna.