Last night I came back home to Helsinki. I didn’t like it. I wanted to stay longer at the place I hold most dear in all of this land, and it felt too rushed to come back so soon. AND, never ever drive when all of Finland is on the move. Holy fuck, the queues brought me to the brink of madness. I was happy when I finally got to shift to second gear. That tells you how slowly we were moving along. Not until just north of Lahti did we get to speed up and reach 100 km/h. Anyway, back to what I wanted to tell you guys about.
Going to Leppävirta was a lot of fun. I was excited, I love that place. It’s not only a peaceful and quiet country side village, it’s a place full of memories and relatives. My brother Mathias said the other day: “This is where all my best childhood memories are from.” And I have to agree.
We did the barbecue thing, we drank many cold beers, we went to sauna and all that typical holiday stuff.
Mathias and I had the most interesting adventure together, and this is the story of how it all went down.
Mathias and I went out for a drive. We went to Konnuksen kanava, walked around there for a bit, drove back to the village and decided to have an ice cream at the gas station were we had to fill the water tanks with fresh drinking water.
As I threw the ice cream wrapping in the trash bin I saw something at the bottom of it. Not only were there a few pieces of trash, there lay a brand new, very expensive Nokia mobile phone. One of those that cost so much I can only dream of ever owning one myself. I picked the phone up and showed it to my brother, and I think he was a little surprised too.
“What are we going to do with it”, we thought out loud. My first thought was to go back in and have a chat with the staff of the gas station. While I was busy thinking Mathias already had looked through the phone’s “Contacts” list and in there he saw… our uncle Jari’s phone number!
Problem solved! We decided to call our uncle Jari with the phone I found and tell him the person this phone belongs to had lost it. But whoever owned the phone had blocked their number. Bummer. So instead Mathias called our uncle Jari with his phone, and Jari told us to head over to his house and we could investigate this mystery together.
We drove over there and told Jari and his wife how we found the phone at the bottom of a trash bin and how Jari’s phone number is in the phone. They too were surprised and wanted to find out whose phone it could be. Jari looked through all the numbers in the phone and eventually found one under “Koti” (Home) so he sent that number to a “find-person-based-on-number” service and the look on his face when he found out whose phone it is was priceless. A shocked uncle Jari looked over at us and said… “the phone belongs to the former director of Leppävirta municipality”.
WHOA! Who could have imagined? We must have been confused by this news because we debated over what to do next. Should we give the phone to the cops, was there a crime here? Should I get to keep this phone, because the guy’s loaded and can afford a new phone anytime he chooses to? Should we head on over to his house and give it back to him?
We did the obvious; we drove over to his house and returned the phone. Mathias went up to the house and knocked on the door, the ex-director opened the door and as Mathias told him about our little adventure his jaw dropped. Mathias handed him his phone and his face lit up, and seldom have you seen a happier guy! The director said “hang on”, went back in his house and handed Mathias a bottle of red wine.
Later that night Mathias let me drink most of it since I found the phone.
So, people, don’t be afraid of looking down a trash bin because you never know what adventures may lay at the bottom of them!
