It
was the late 90s and, love-struck, I had moved to Turku, Finland to be with my
then-boyfriend while he wrote his thesis.
Before
I left Australia, an older lady I knew mentioned that her son Trevor was
planning to visit Finland. Politely, I handed over my Finnish contact details,
never for a moment imagining that Trevor would actually call me.
He
did call me. Not only did he call me, but a matter of weeks later he turned up
on our wintery Turku doorstep.
He
was a sight to behold. Tall, padded out like the Michelin man, and with no part
of his body visible except his eyes, he had dressed for the elements.
As he started peeling off layers in the warmth of our apartment, he
proudly divulged the reason he was so thoroughly protected against the cold. When
clothes shopping for his Finland trip, he hadn’t wanted to trust the people at
North Face or Kathmandu who had tried to sell him GoreTex. He did not believe that any ordinary clothes could possibly withstand
the extreme cold of a Finnish winter. He decided to take matters into his own
hands. He ordered a tailor-made bodysuit made entirely of sheepskin, complete
with slit-eyed balaclava, booties, and oven-mitt-type gloves. His idea was that
at all times he would wear this under his normal clothes, rendering him
impervious to the coldest of temperatures.
(I later wondered, had he worn all that stuff during the entire flight from Australia? or had he schlepped it all on board in a huge carry-on bag and effected his Trevor-to-Arctic-Man transformation within the cramped confines of a Finnair toilet cubicle?)
Sadly
for Trevor, Finland had a pretty mild winter that year. It was barely below
zero the day he landed. By the time he made it to our door, he was sweaty and
breathless.
And
so his stay in Finland began.
The
second day, I offered to show him around Turku. He obligingly walked around
with me, but seemed bored and distracted. The third day, when I again offered to be his tour guide, he flatly
refused. “I’m not really interested in sight-seeing”, he said, and proceeded to
spend the entire day sitting at our kitchen table, intermittently reading a
manual on motorcycle repair, and expounding his theories on life (which
included: why watch the news -- who needs to know what is going on in the rest
of the world? And: never eat sugar, because it is evil. He was ahead of
his time on that one). It turned out that he was a taxi driver. Somehow, this
fitted perfectly. He struck me as someone who had spent an awful lot of time
with his own thoughts.
My
Finn and I asked each other in whispers why on earth he had come to Finland if
not to take a look around? We were baffled, not to mention just a teensy bit
worried at the thought of just how many days he might want to spend within the
four corners of our apartment.
On
the fourth day, we were relieved when Trevor announced that he was going to
Helsinki. We were puzzled, though – he had, after all, confessed to a complete lack of
interest in being a tourist.
And
then, shyly, he revealed his big news. He
had come to Finland to meet a woman.
To be more specific, he had come to
Finland to find a wife.
He
had done some diligent groundwork: he had placed advertisements in a few major
newspapers, and four or five Marjas and Katjas had actually expressed interest.
“Why
Finland?” we asked him.
He smiled with unmistakable satisfaction – clearly, he
had thought carefully about this and was dying to share his rationale.
“Because
Finnish women are the only pure women left in this world.”
Three
weeks after embarking on his quest, Trevor phoned me – to invite us to his
wedding. Another three weeks later, I watched him walk down the aisle with his
new bride on his arm. It was all a bit surreal.
He
told me after the ceremony that he’d worn long underwear under his wedding
clothes.
Disappointingly, though, not his sheepskin bodysuit.
