Partying in a Finnish barn
Stories of expat life.
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I: So where are we going after this?
C: Let me ask.
C: Some of the guys are going to a farm party. We will join them.
I: Did you say... Farm??
C: Yes. I also thought it was weird. Sometimes in French we say pharma instead of pharmaceutical, so you know... Pharma, pharm. Maybe they meant that it is a party organized by pharmaceutical students. I 'll check again.
C: Nope. They really did mean farm.
Living abroad exposes you to so many more people. Simply the fact that you are a stranger among strangers, in an unknown place, forces you to go out of your shell and socialize. There are also other things that come on top of living abroad, that will enhance that exposure.
One of them is studying. When you move abroad, you are lost and try to make new friends. Well, a university is a pool of people in the exact same situation as you: they are new to the country, around the same age and most likely do not speak the local language. That makes universities catalysts for new friendships.
Even better, if you also live in a university dorm. Now, not only you are surrounded by people in the same situation as you during the day, but you also live with them; you cook with them, you hang out with them, you say hi to them in the corridor. Before you know it you ‘re arranging drinks, or in this case, trips.
That is where our story begins. Right before an Easter break, when covid was not a thing.
During my studies, I was living in a university dorm. Among the people I hanged out with, was a French girl, let's call her Camille and a Catalan guy1, whom we ‘ll call Jordi. We did a lot of things together. It didn't take too much time for the idea to pop up: should we do something for Easter?
During that time, Camille had a cousin studying in Helsinki. She hadn’t seen her for a while and none of us had been to Helsinki before. Long story short, tickets to Helsinki: booked. We also spent a night in Tallinn in a house that could have been the setup for a horror movie. But that is a story for another time.
We spent the first day exploring the city centre2. The second night, we had planned to have dinner at the dorm where Camille's cousin was staying, a bit outside the city.
Dinner was nothing fancy. We were a lot of students, so it was potluck-style. We had prepared some food in our Airbnb and took it with us to the dorm. After having dinner and some wine of questionable quality, the following dialogue between Camille (C) and I (I) took place:
I: So where are we going after this?
C: Let me ask.
C: Some of the guys are going to a farm party. We will join them.
I: Did you say... Farm??
C: Yes. I also thought it was weird. Sometimes in French we say pharma instead of pharmaceutical, so you know... Pharma, pharm. Maybe they meant that it is a party organized by pharmaceutical students. I 'll check again.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Nope. They really did mean farm.
And just like that, half an hour later we were on our way to a farm party. Whatever that meant. On our way we passed some streets, even a small highway, but eventually we were walking through fields. The deeper we went into the fields, more people started showing up. A little bit like the iconic march of the Ents in Lord of the Rings.
Thirty minutes later, we arrived.
Turns out that, what the French students meant by farm, was actually a barn. A barn surrounded by tall trees, as if a small forest had popped up in that field. Outside the barn was a tiny food truck, which after all these years, I don't remember what kind of food it was selling. I remember not trusting it though. The whole place was completely dark except for a few tiny lights, and the light coming from inside the truck. That also meant that, anywhere farther than a few meters from the truck, was a potential… pissoir.
From the inside, the barn was a proper barn. Everything was covered in hay, and you could tell that they had moved most of it to the side, to make space for the people.
On one side of the barn, there was a DIY3 stage. On top of the stage, there was a full-blown band setup. The band was already up there and getting ready. Next to them was a small stand to control the sound and the lights.
A sound engineer stand.
In a barn.
In the middle of f*ckin nowhere.
Mind. Blown.
On the other side there was a bar. And like any self-respecting barn bar, it was made out of a couple of long wooden planks, laying on old rusty oil barrels. On the bar, there were beer kegs. The bar served beer and beer. Maybe there was also a type of beer.
We decided to go with beer.
The party was amazing. Not so much because of the band and certainly not because of the vast selection of drinks. But because of the weird setup, and because everyone was in a good mood. We danced, we drank4, and by the end of the night hay had reached everywhere.
On the way back, I realized that Helsinki is located much northern than I thought. When we booked the trip, Copenhagen and Helsinki were at pretty much the same latitude -in my ignorant mind. After partying, walking for half an hour at night and waiting for the bus for another half, I started suspecting that Helsinki is much colder than Copenhagen. The light snowfall that started while we were waiting for the bus, also gave me a hint. Checking google maps made it official: Helsinki is much northern than I thought.
The bus never came. Jordi was shivering at the bus stop and we were had all sat very closely together with him in the middle, to keep (him) warm. Eventually, we decided to walk back to the dorm and crash on Camille’s cousin's floor. A floor that at that moment felt like the softest king-size bed.
Maybe you find Helsinki boring. Maybe you find barns scary. And maybe you think this story is silly. I don't have any reason to disagree with any of that. But that is not the point.
The point is that, I would have never been partying in a barn in Helsinki, if I had not decided to move abroad in the first place.
Expat life at its best.Â
God forbid, do not call him Spanish.
I really don’t like that Substack marks British spellings, as spelling errors.
Do It Yourself. If you are not familiar with the expression, in this context I mean that it wasn’t a fancy structure; just something the party organizers put together, so that the band could stand on it.
Beer in case you were wondering.
ah, college parties. Those were always wild, cheap, unpredictable, and unexpected, and make for good stories during reunions or even the day after. Good times!
10/10! I remember when I met people from the valleys in the mountains (more valleys and more mountains than mine) and they mentioned 'barns', I thought it was a barn-barn, with hey etc, but they meant 'cabin' (just further up the mountain).