Saturday evening:

I go for a walk along the shore of Lake Pieksäjärvi, the local ocean, just to relax and get a bit of exercise after working six hours selling insurance on the phone. I have an intuitive gut feeling, the kind that never lies: I'm going to meet somebody new, and the meeting will be somehow significant. Well, with my iPod for company, I walk the lakeshore trails this way and come back the other way, almost to the end. I sit down on a bench right on the shore, with the waves lapping just inches from my feet. I bask in the sunset, as the fiery rays dance off the water, creating an ever-shifting light show on the birch and alder trees behind me. The soothing, complex, beautiful strains of Bach's organ masterpieces create hyperdimensional patterns in my mind's eye as I sit there, utterly absorbed in the timeless moment....

And I awake to a sense of impending change -- the moment is finishing up, transitioning to a new imperative. I gaze back at the trees, the park -- nobody in sight. Maybe someone will show up...? No one does, but then my squinting eyes make out a pair of indistinct figures on another bench some distance away. I get up and walk the path toward them. I glance at them out of the corner of my eye: two girls, an older and a younger, locals. They are totally disinterested in me, a stranger passing by. I reciprocate their disinterest and move on without betraying anything.

In a meandering way, I walk the streets toward home. I'm stalling for time -- the anticipated encounter hasn't materialized and I'm loathe to return indoors. Just as I'm about to make the last turn, the most unexpected spectacle greets my eyes: a group of girls, all dressed in uniform, each carrying a large backpack, with the air of having come a long way from home. I practically bump into them, and say the first thing that comes to mind (in English -- remember, this is Finland):

"Whoa, hey! Where you from?"

"We're from Germany," came the reply from a girl who was obviously a leader. "Do you know any place we could spend the night?"

Now keep in mind, the city I live in is no cosmopolitan center of sophistication. It's a backwater town whose greatest claim to fame is the fact that railroads run four ways through it, making it more of a place to change trains than anything of a destination for travelers, especially for tourists from abroad. It's a place where the local toughs will threaten to rearrange your face even for speaking accented Finnish, much less a whole different language. This was something quite out of the ordinary.

Wanting to help in any way I could, I suggested the town's only hotel of any note. That was out of the question, though, because as the leader explained, they had no money for such luxuries. They were Girl Scouts, she said. They could sleep outside.

That pretty much sealed it: they'd have to find a spot on the lake. It's the only place to sleep outside so close to the town center without being out in the open with street lamps and traffic. I gladly joined their group on the search for a suitable spot. The park was out, because of the drunks. Their attention would be really unwanted, more so than any hordes of mosquitoes. We hit upon our solution easily: in their wanderings since arriving the previous day, they'd seen an ideal spot at the extremity of a spit of land jutting out into the lake. I'd seen it, too, as a matter of fact, on my solitary walk -- it had been occupied by a young couple seeking a measure of privacy. And just as a funny coincidence, it was the same spit of land as the noteworthy hotel, so they'd be camping out practically within sight of it, ha ha.

We made our way to the spot, which was perfect: flat, clear ground, shrouded by forest, far enough from drunks and passers-by, surrounded by the rhythmic sound of the lake. As the four younger Girl Scouts set up camp, the two leaders and I set out back to town. They needed to replenish their drinking water, which they obtained from an Irish pub on the main drag. (OK, so we are cosmopolitan enough to have an Irish pub. But that may be because the one area in which Finns are almost universally proud of their sophistication is in the fine art of downing alcohol.) And I, of course, was going home.

The girls asked me (our conversation had already ranged over a variety of topics, both more and less personal in nature) if there were any happenings in town the next day. The only one I could think of was... church. The other leader, the quieter one, said she would like to go -- it had been her wish to visit a church at least once on this trip. Actually, even though I recently renounced Christianity, the thought had been on my mind, too. I was even wearing my gold cross neckchain for some reason. So we made an agreement to meet at the Center Street church at 10 o'clock Sunday morning, said goodnight, and parted.

(This whole time, my computer was downloading Ubuntu Linux. More on that in a later entry. I also burned a couple of DVDs. More on that in the next.)

-BC

P.S. Oops. Just noticed the shift from present to past tense in paragraph 5. 'Twas a subconscious thing. You'll be OK with it, won't you? Yup. Thanks.