It’s Josephine’s birthday and we’re dancing at Siltanen and sometime in the a.m. we decide to move the party to Redrum. Some people take taxis (although nothing in Helsinki is far) and some people bike. Andreea and I walk and one of the first things we see is a drunk guy on the other side of the street – and not just swervy-drunk, but zig-zag-bumping-and-holding-onto-the-building-drunk. Girls and guys are equally spotted stumbling in near-black-out-mode during the late hours in Helsinki. In any other city they’d be a target. Here they regularly pass out on the sidewalk and others politely walk around them. Is there such a thing as feeling too safe?
For a city as big as Helsinki, the public trust is off the charts. Babies in baby strollers are left outside of stores. Bikes are left unlocked in front of supermarkets. Laptops, cameras and bags are left on cafe tables unattended. Beyond high employment rates and no desperation to steal, some think it’s the homogenous culture and some think it’s a behavior maintained after a tipping point. There’s an unspoken camaraderie in the cafe if the guy next to you leaves his camera unattended and you later do in kind with your bag. When people give you the benefit of the doubt, you want to give them the benefit of the doubt back. Something happens when you come back and see that nothing happened.
But Helsinki is so safe that people think they can get shit-faced and publicly swerve home without worries. Should anyone ever think their city is that safe? Does a hint of danger increase sobriety? Andreea and I see a shape on the sidewalk. As we get closer we see books, blood, and a man slumped on his side. “Oh my god are you ok?” He wakes up. He’s trashed. “Ya ya..” “Oh my god what happened?” “Nothing nothing…” His face is punched in and he says something about his keys. Andreea calls the police. I gather up gruesome things from the sidewalk – book pages are stuck together with blood, his glasses are broken, his keys are red and sticky. He won’t tell us what happened but he has enough memory to say he lives here so we walk him in to the building. “I’m not a Nazi… Who are you?… You are angels…” The key fits into the apartment door and it opens up to a giant and tidy home with a diplomat-worthy dining room and two bathrooms. “Please stay, what are your names…” We tell him he really needs to rest and we put his things on the table and leave and wonder if he’ll remember any of this tomorrow.
