Nordic Kitchen

Helsinki airport, Finland

Autumn, 2022

Music recommendation: Clay Pigeons, Blaze Foley  

Airport bars are always interesting. Even when they are boring. People are in limbo. Surely there was great purpose in all our mornings. Whether it was a meaningful thing that gave us the strength to get out of bed, it was undoubtably important. Important enough to enter those gravity defeating constructions we call planes. Something, some reason brought us all here. Even though nobody wants to be here exactly. Here at Nordic Kitchen, the joy of Helsinki airport. Nobody is here because of its great beer selection, fantastic atmosphere or to meet old friends. It isn’t a bad place, but it is just a place. A place that, save for the chefs and bartenders, nobody came for. We all just happen to be here. In anticipation.

This bar isn’t pretending, it isn’t trying to separate itself from the airport. You can see the people walking past the tax-free stores. Sauntering in that cold airport light. Their shuffling feet provide the background music here. Some airports try to do more, they try make it feel like the airport is a place someone actually wants to be. Helsinki is not one of these airports. There are airport bars that try to close themselves off from their surroundings creating a portal that could be anywhere. Very few achieve it and Nordic Kitchen isn’t even trying. It isn’t trying to be more than it is. It is, neatly, a place between places, a pause between flight, a space amid spaces.

That is where I am, drinking a beer, waiting for my deer burger, which I hope will turn out to be reindeer. Reindeer is excellent, it would be one of the few things that is excellent here. I guess the beer is pretty good. Everything else is varying degrees of fine.

A Finn just joined me at my table, content to let me write. Content to just be with his glass of beer. ‘Being and Time’ and then ‘Being and Nothingness’, it seems high time for Being and Beer: A drunken take on the evolution of existentialism in the western world. It won’t be written here, lest I am unlucky enough to have a 20 hour layover. I hope it won’t come to that.

Both my burger and another Finn have joined the table. The second Finn is an old man with a taste for hard liquor and a tongue that won’t sit still. The old Finn missed his flight and now doesn’t know what to do. He wants to go to Cyprus, partially because he wants to get away from his wife but mostly for more unclear reasons. A pilgrimage to Cyprus, that is what he says. Why and to what end this pilgrimage is undertaken remains a mystery wrapped in tipsy ramblings and a heavy accent.

You can’t help but wonder with what purpose the people around, came here. Business, pleasure, family visits, fleeing from something. I am here for love. Helsinki airport is merely a place I need to pass to get to her. She is still thousands of miles away. There is a target, a clear direction I guess that, except for the old Finn, we all have a direction. Nobody is lost here and nobody has arrived yet.

The old Finn and the younger Finn are dragging me into a conversation, about politics. Or rather the continuation of politics by other means. War to be precise. Despite the fact that they occasional use of Russian for certain idioms and phrases, they display what one expects of the Finns: a strong anti-Russian sentiment. One of the Russian phrases is used roughly translates to “massive prick”. Who is being described here ought to be obvious. There are good historical reasons for them to be weary of Russian wars. We all have historical reasons to believe what we believe. We all have reasons in our personal history that brought us here. I fell in love nearly five years ago. So the past projects itself into our future. Personal narratives from the past are the foundation of our current experiences and cast themselves into our imagined future narratives. The younger Finn leaves for his flight. The older Finn grabs another drink. He really doesn’t want to go home.

He wants to leave Finland. Or rather, he doesn’t want to go back to his wife, he has a pilgrimage to go on. A pilgrimage as an excuse to leave a hated home, I wonder how often that has been the true reason for pilgrims to go. Not searching for God but scurrying away from spouse or parents. It makes no difference. You got to help the pilgrim. He can’t book from the airport. Having neither smartphone nor laptop has its disadvantages. Though, at the risk of sounding arrogant, meeting me in an airport bar, has its advantages. I tell him I can book for him. A flight tonight so he doesn’t have to go back. He says direction Cyprus is good enough. We settle on Istanbul. A place where pilgrims have passed through for centuries.

The old Finn is quite drunk. He needs to get going and I need to catch my flight. ‘Join me to Istanbul’ he says. That is, I guess, the difference between running to and from something. I try to help him on his way, with a booking number, flight details and directions. He really is quite drunk. I hope he makes it. I don’t mind making a 300 euro down payment on my karma but I would like to have actually helped someone. Ha! Karma? If I make my flight and fly safely to her, I consider the universe and me to be square. If I would believe in such things. I am afraid that Nordic Kitchen isn’t really the place to turn me into a spiritualist.