Freed. Like That Bird.
A Helsinki Dérive, Part Two
On my third full day in Helsinki, I find myself on the second floor of Piilo café, perched over a slice of quiche and a coffee, still suspended in the haze of caffeine and jet lag. The chatter all around me washes together into a soft drone — I might catch one word out of a hundred, which makes me think our dog back home has a better hit rate with English. But that partial incomprehension is part of the comfort. It turns the café into a cocoon, a place where language becomes sound rather than news, rhythm rather than alarm.
While Nancy is a few blocks away at the UFF sale, I watch the room turn its attention to a small drama: a bird has flown in through some forgotten gap and now flits between light fixtures and beams. A patron finally manages to coax it toward an open window. When the bird makes it out, I cheer — like the bloody tourist I am, but freely, with no self-consciousness.
It’s a strange thing to find this moment worth celebrating. But here, ten hours ahead of the American outrage cycle, I’m living in a buffer zone. Back home, the engines that churn out daily fury are still idling in sleep mode, although I imagine Heather Cox Richardson cranking out another magnum of historical documentation that serves as a daily worry doll for her fans. Last night’s crisis has already congealed into residue; today’s hasn’t yet been manufactured. In Helsinki, for a few hours each morning, the world runs cleaner, like the brain’s glymphatic system quietly flushing away yesterday’s toxins before the new day begins.
In that respite, a bird’s escape feels like a genuine victory: a problem that can be solved without commentary, performance, or ideological spin. The patron who helped didn’t tweet about it. Nobody declared it a metaphor. It was just a bird, just a window, just a solution.
The kinship I felt with that bird was real: both of us briefly displaced, both of us looking for a way out. Sometimes being a tourist lets you see the enclosure more clearly, but also glimpse the simple exits you miss when you’re home. On the other hand (or wing?), that bird is no longer part of the tiny spectacle. It is as free to wander as to be ignored, as the cafe reclaims the space of our little drama with paying customers and their clattering chatter.
Yesterday I waxed nostalgic over hamburgers and fry vat smells. This afternoon, a surprisingly sweet slice of broccoli quiche with a side salad dominated by cherry tomatoes and hunks of cucumber. With a cup of drip coffee (complimentary refill), it’s a more modest lunch than what my fellow diners are having; but when your body keeps insisting that it’s 2AM, you learn to listen and adjust.
Nancy again finds me typing away, although she’s surprisingly empty-handed from UFF, and ducks back downstairs to return with her slice of quiche (spinach and tomato, also charmingly sweet, yet not distractingly so) and coffee. I recount the tale of the bird while she digs into her lunch.
We discovered Piilo last year while looking to scratch a gelato itch, so after having dutifully performed the grown-up work of lunch, we treat ourselves to dessert, the most important part of any meal. She gets a scoop of a mojito-flavored concoction, while I opt for the unlabeled bubblegum flavored marshmallow mixture that has absolutely no business being that shade of blue, or that delicious.
After our lunch, Nancy will wander to a flea market to continue her vintage quest, while I swing past two game cafes on the way back to our Airbnb. Both of them were kind of a bust; empty of clientele, but then it’s just past 1PM on a Thursday afternoon. One might tut-tut at my utterly unambitious international itinerary, that I’m wasting an opportunity in Helsinki to do… exactly what? Yeah, I thought so.