Undressing neighbours

Let’s face it: nothing lasts forever, and in my case this means my honeymoon with Vaasanhovi is coming to an end. I am, of course, talking about the house I live in and the surrounding neighbourhood, which certainly doesn’t live up to the whiff of aristocracy suggested by its name. When I moved here two years ago in September, all the hustle and bustle associated with the district of Kallio seemed like jolly good fun to me. Okay, my room is hardly big enough to accommodate anything bigger than my bed (which has started to feel pretty cramped lately), but the apartment was tidy, convenient for living with a flatmate and, at least according to Helsinki’s outrageous standards, cheap. The walls were beyond disgusting, and there were bullet-holes in the bigger room, but we cheerfully set to the task of tearing the crackling brownish wallpaper down, filling up the holes, and splashing some new paint around. Have I mentioned I signed the contract for this flat without ever having been in it? No matter! After returning from Austria with a Styrian hat on my head and an “Ich liebe dich” –card in my wallet (yes, it’s still there), spending two months without a speck of privacy at my parent’s place and taking a look at some really horrible flats all over the suburbs, I would probably have been ready to sign a contract for a live-in cupboard on the moon.

I felt all chic and urbanised after spending nine months in a Central European town where the rent was paid in cash (and off the record), grocery shops shut their doors every time you blinked and frequent bank holidays meant an obligatory escape to the cow-filled hills. Kallio’s smelly cheap bars passed for alternative entertainment. Sure, white-cum-grayish was not all that beautiful, but the houses had their own gruff charm. Somebody smashing bottles in S-market was all part of a bigger adventure. Time flies by, and what used to feel “not all that bad” seems increasingly absurd now: tripping over drunk people on the way home and dodging exhibitionists who choose the neighbour’s tiny patch of grass to urinate on. Things on my street tend to change very quickly – yesterday’s fast food eatery is today’s Thai massage parlour, and instead of Turkish men promising salami in your pizza and delivering It with minced meat, you have oriental girls scurrying about in their skimpy and brightly-coloured garments. On the other side of the street, some made-up girl is taking a break from her own strip-tease show and having a cigarette. It’s getting a little embarrassing to give instructions to visitors: “Take a right turn at Hotgirls and you’ll find me right next to the sex megastore!”

Then, of course, there are the neighbours. Fortunately, they like to keep to themselves – our most significant contact with them was when they called the police to knock on our door at 11 pm on a Saturday night for disturbing their quiet with “uncontrolled partying” (it was the night of our housewarming party: okay, so we might have had one or two loud moments including Arabic pop competing with jazzy lounge-music, but by the time the police arrived – probably expecting to see a bunch of knife-waving heroin addicts - we were sipping wine, listening to The Real Group and discussing Brahms). There’s the red-haired woman who walks about with a constant worried look, just dying to find trouble she can report to someone (she looks at me with dismay every time I pass her cheerfully by and say hello). And let’s not forget the fat guy who likes to stroll about the stairway in his bathrobe (probably on his way to the sauna – or, more probably, out for a drink?). There is that one cheerful young bookish-looking girl who lives on the top floor – she must be the one who called the police and raised hell after catching unknown intruders having sex in our attic. I still feel sorry for the woman I accidentally caught stark naked while exploring our communal rooms one day. She let out a sort of squeal of fright and made a dash for the sauna before I could apologise. Still, we managed to have a casual chat about the new washing machine afterwards while hanging our clothes to dry – let’s just say it was sort of akward.

Call me unadventurous and boring, but it’s time to find some place not quite so lively. The first place to look, then, would be today’s special living section of the newspaper. The main article is all about Tallinn’s apartments having become affordable once again, but I don’t quite see the charm of crossing the sea just to get the day started. I get distracted, and start thinking about all the other stuff people have been talking about lately. It seems Helsinki’s residents have developed some sort of obsession towards rabbits, which do scurry about some more parklike areas outside downtown, but really I don’t see what the fuss is all about.
Then, of course, there’s our very own version of “Strictly Come Dancing” (Tanssii Tähtien Kanssa), which is all the rage. The couple of times I’ve been part of the studio audience have been quite a lot of fun – my favourite part is waving my empty glass about and trying to get the attention of the staff which runs all over the place pouring wine to an audience meant to be drunk and cheer their favourites towards stardom. We all left behind a huge pile of rubbish on the 1st of May, but on a brighter note, it looks like we’ve left the worst days of street dust behind us. Just having my window open made me want to go out and get some of those disposable breathing masks which seem to be making a comeback in fashion.

Be as it may, even if it would be easy to find a place to live here, where to find the time for looking around and eventually moving? My summer plans have got completely out of hand already, and with all the end-of-the-term performances coming up there’s hardly any time to get home in between to get the right music. There’ll be more on these choral activities in the next posts. It’s time for me to go put my bed back together. Good night!