A tale of two cities

Many people like to think of Christmas as an event full of unchanged traditions and rituals - a familiar celebration where everything is done like last Christmas. For me, every Christmas feels different from the last. The tree looks the same as last year and the candles are once again burning, but life changes quickly, and so does the context in which Christmas is celebrated.

Last week, the blanket of snow covering Graz created a peaceful setting for a short and memorable visit to a place I still called home less than half a year ago. Apart from the more obvious things (new faces instead of familiar ones, worsened service in Thomawirt), the city had a whole new feeling to it now that I have left it behind me - perhaps not for good, but at least for now. The smells, sounds and sights of Graz still remind me of my year there. The things that happened are written on the streets and I imagine that the people I miss are behind the same windows. The city seems the same as it was when I left it.

However, I am no longer there. When I walk along the wonderful streets of the old town, I am not rushing to a lesson but killing time before an meeting at the café. When I go to the rehearsals of familiar choirs, I don't know what to do with myself, because I have no task to accomplish there and suddenly I don't feel like small talk, why is everybody asking me whether it was easy to go back, what answer do they want to hear? I am using my Austrian number, but the phone calls I am getting are from Finland. I can listen to my favourite song, but it will never sound the same as that day when I walked down Morellenfeldgasse. The cooks at the Mensa are familiar but the clientele has changed. I climb the Schlossberg not for a Sunday walk, but to say goodbye.

I feel like rushing up the dark wooden stairs, opening the door to my home and running into the first room on the left, but it is now inhabited by Polish students who have labeled our mailbox with strange names. I walk around Hilmteich with a good friend but the fresh air doesn't feel the same as when I went there in January, listening to Tapiolan Kuoro on my iPod. I hug the people I know and feel so happy to see them, but something is missing, and look: there is that Latin boy who dated my Romanian flatmate and now waves at me like he sees me every day, and I can not live in two places at the same time, and "yes I'll come over for a weekend in the spring" and "yes of course I'll see you soon" but I don't know whether I will because I ran out of excuses to go back, now that I have brought all my last clothes home and seen the people I needed to see. And when I am on my way to the Hauptbahnhof, nobody is seeing me off, and the only person worried about me missing my train is a blind lady who listens to my speech and says one would never guess I am a foreigner, I sound like a native.

And maybe this was a bad idea anyway, maybe I am strange to have wanted to go back so soon, but I said I would and I did, and while I am lying in bed with a terrible cough, everywhere people are going about their everyday lives: "I need to make sure I get a class for practising tomorrow" or "I haven't stocked up for the weekend in Spar"; and this used to be my life, too, I used to do these things, and I can't believe the conducting lessons are still at exactly the same time and place, and I am sitting there feeling bad because I have not looked at the pieces, and I get a text message from Helsinki and remember where I am, and I reply at once because I am no longer a student here, nobody can tell me off for using my phone in the middle of a lesson, and I don't know whether this is funny or sad but there is a smile on my face so I suppose I am very happy. I am happy I am where I am now, a visitor at home, detached but not distant.

My life is back where it was before, it is here in the north where I go to Stockmann and Akateeminen for presents and it is a different language I use at work. I walk through wind and sleet in the late evening and feel the sea very nearby. I meet people I didn't know before but still seem to recognise them when I look at their picture which was taken ten years ago. I collect my thoughts on the tram between Kallio and Töölö and listen to music on the way, and I know that now comes the climax of the piece, the sopranos are going to soar high up and the rest of the singers will burst into a fantastic fortissimo chord, but I do not turn down the volume, I do not care, I want to feel the music bursting through my head, I want it to lift me off the ground and high up where I might be able to see all the way to Austria. I want this feeling to last just a while longer.