Silence

This past month I exemplified on the blog how Finns treat silence. With respect. Total, incredible, and silly respect.
I’ve been having the most incredible silence conversations ever… I seriously do not understand how Finns could survive for so long without that primordial element that makes us human, speech.
THEY DON’T TALK. Well, obviously they do sometimes to ask directions, otherwise they would get lost in their marvellous and long subway system. But other than that, they don’t speak much. They try to nod as much as they can. Trains trips are silent, bus rides are boring.
Latin people have the same problem, we don’t talk. We SCREAM out loud so everybody knows our story, even when we are on a bus ride. Basically, wherever we are, hell breaks loose.
The first time I realized it was right after I started living in Hellsinki. I was lost and trying to figure out a way to reach Central Station so I asked someone who was passing by, very cordially, ‘Excuse me, could you tell me the way to the train station?’. He stopped and looked directly at me for a second, then turned his back on me and kept walking. I could not believe that had just happened. Maybe there was some sort of a space continuum void and I lost part of my life, the part where he was explaining me the way. Maybe I reached hell and no one would ever speak to me again. Maybe I went nuts… but all those thoughts vanished minutes later after looking to a woman with nice curves and great legs covered by black stockings, passing by, which made me realize that it was not hell yet.
Days later I started using the bus to reach the construction area where my team is designing a new apartment building near Hellsinki. When I went there for the first time, I thought that maybe something happened in the city, which made everybody silent and stun. The following trips were exactly the same. I could hear the humming of the engine, the wheels crashing the rubble outside, but no speech. ‘Maybe something is wrong with me’ I thought. ‘Maybe I used my earphones too loud and now my mom’s worst predictions were true and my ears lost contact with the world around me.’ But it wasn’t me, it was them, Finns. Nobody spoke…
…
The whole trip, everybody was silent. I heard a cell phone ring once, but the girl who answered it was so silent, that I couldn’t even hear her. Amazing. When I got home and asked my girlfriend, she said that was normal. ‘We’re not supposed to let strangers know what’s going on our lives’ Now that sounded boring. So I got to keep myself to myself now? What kind of life would that be?
But then I realised. They do that in phone calls too! Hell, that doesn’t make any sense either. I was talking to an engineer not long ago and I was questioning him some structural concerns… but after he replied some ‘Yoo, no nii.’ (by the way, that sounds like a Monty Python sentence) he went silent on me. There was NO answer on the other side because he decided to think, with me hanging on the other side of the line. ‘Hell! I’m paying here! Can you give me a damn answer today?’