Places I Already Know I'll Miss and Waiting for the Culture Shock
Helsinki
I've been extremely lucky with the weather since moving to Helsinki, I definitely wasn't expecting 24 degrees of heat most days and so much lovely sunshine! The sunlight has been especially lovely - at this time of year it's still light for quite a lot of the day, but the evening has that beautiful golden, long light of autumn already.
I love autumn, perhaps because I'm a student, so to me it always signifies a fresh start and the excitement of a new academic year, without the onslaught of deadlines and stress that comes in winter and spring. It does make me sad, however, to think about the fact that I might only get one chance to properly experience the changing of the seasons here in Helsinki, that I might not get to enjoy the later summer and early autumn golden sun in quite the same way again. I already know I'll miss walking home through Alppila Park (in the baking heat!), getting to know Helsinki and seeing Kaisaniemi Bay sparkling in the sun. Perhaps part of this sense of knowing I'll already miss something, somewhere and some point in time stems from the fact that I know that autumn in Finland is not a long season! There's a comparatively short period in which to enjoy warmer temperatures, more daylight and the leaves changing colour before the long winter begins.
As someone who's lived abroad before, I'm already familiar with the concept of culture shock and the associated homesickness. As a student, this is something that always crops up on some introductory presentation given at the start of the academic year, and I've even seen a graph showing how people tend to feel over time once they've moved to a different country! In fact, there is research dedicated to studying homesickness and culture shock, although I can't say I'm an expert in this field. It's certainly something interesting to think about for me, not just as someone who might experience it myself but also as someone with broader research interests in nation, belonging, migration and home. After all, who gets to experience homesickness and culture shock? Those words tend to be associated more (at least in my opinion) with people who voluntarily move abroad, but also who tend to come from more affluent backgrounds and certain countries more so than others.
There's a lot of interesting things to be said about the proposed mechanisms for how culture shock and homesickness work, and I'll likely return to this topic, but recently I've been thinking most about the stages that people go through as they experience these things. Normally, people first feel excited and very positive about the place they've moved to and tend to see it in a very positive light. Certainly, that's been my experience in Finland both very literally and metaphorically! After this initial honeymoon period, however, comes the homesickness and often an accompanying disdain for the place a person has moved to. Then, gradually, a person's emotions tend to balance out and they start to feel at home in the new place they live. It's neither perfect nor terrible. If they return home to where they originally came from, they might even experience reverse-culture shock and feel as though their home country is strange and wrong compared to where they now live. Interestingly, some people never overcome the period of homesickness and always experience some degree of culture shock and isolation in a new place.
So, as I've been walking home in the golden Helsinki sun, thinking about how I'll soon be missing it as winter fast approaches, I've also been bracing myself for the period of homesickness that will likely also arrive at the same time. Of course, homesickness is not necessarily connected to the seasons, and you can (and likely will) experience it regardless of when you move to a new place and what the weather is like, but for me it seems rather fitting and poetic that my feelings seem so tied to the natural rhythms of nature. Poetic, but also perhaps irritating, as dealing with homesickness is already difficult before having to also contend with dwindling daylight hours, rain and the cold.
But I'm sure I'll survive! After all, I had a similar experience in St Petersburg three years ago, which is certainly useful to look back on. Maybe thinking back to that period of my life is making me prematurely nostalgic for moments and places now, as there I also got to experience halcyon days in a golden autumn before a very long winter. But even in winter there's still the joy of snowy adventures and the occasional sunny day.