Chapter 80 big snow village

Going south from the Arctic Circle, I didn't expect the weather to get colder and snowier. Several of our cars were too frozen to start.Looking at the map in Oulu, I found that the distance from here to Helsinki is not only long but also complex. In addition to this climate, if you drive, you don’t know what you will encounter on the way.Think twice and decide to take the train. There is a train station in Oulu, but the five vehicles in our convoy have to be towed by the train, so we can only apply for an additional flatbed at the departure station.I don’t know why many railway starting stations in various countries around the world are located in some small places. The starting station we are looking for is called Kontiomaki, which is 180 kilometers southeast of Oulu.So I had no choice but to find a way to start the car, and braved the wind and snow carefully to drive to that place I had never heard of.

Kandy Olmec is not even a small town. The locals say that there are only ten residents here.I think this statement is a bit exaggerated, but in the end, it is a small village with dozens of people. It actually has a train departure station, which probably has something to do with the overall layout of the railway network. Said it was a train station, and what appeared before our eyes were only two thin railway tracks in a heavy snow.The snow grains here are larger than other places, and the entire field of vision is filled with crystals, without even a single footprint. It can be seen that this route is very deserted. We were told to wait for a full three hours.If there are some footprints on the railway and platform in the snow, plus a shadow of the rear of the car going away, it will make people think of Tolstoy.But there wasn't any imaginable signal here, only the creaking sound of my feet digging into the deep snow.

Not far from the railway tracks was a solid wooden house with a pavilion outside the door and lights in the windows. The writing on the wall was in Finnish. I didn’t know it, but I could guess it was a public place.Pushing the door open as if meeting a savior, the inside is as warm as spring, and it is a completely different world from the outside. I can't tell what kind of place this is, but it has everything.Billiards, game consoles, simple meals, toilets, every window has two floors, and all the furnishings are old and comfortable.Seeing us go in, the eyes of several old people inside were shining, watching our every move.By counting, there were seven or eight of them, and I thus proved that the statement that there were only ten local residents was not accurate.The partner went to ask the only middle-aged waitress in the room, but she smiled and said: Almost all of them are here, and a few old ladies will come in a while.

A station hut actually gathers the whole village. I think the main reason is not that it is warm.In the snowy northern Europe, it is such a remote village, people are so lonely, always looking for a place to get together; although there are few trains and passengers starting from here, maybe you can see a few Zhang Sheng's face is richer than a village gathering.Today, our outposts flocked in noisy and noisy, which is not a small thing here. According to the waiter, two old people have already rushed home to inform their wives, asking them to hurry up and join in the fun. The partners quickly entered various games, some playing cards, some playing billiards, and some playing game consoles. The old people watched happily, wanting to intervene but felt that they should not interfere.I left the pool table to go to the toilet, and an old man followed me, probably thinking that there was nothing undisturbed here, and that it was a good place to start a conversation.He chatted with me loudly in Finnish, but he couldn't understand me when I spoke English, and hit a dead end as soon as I came up.But he doesn't believe that there are people who don't understand Finnish at all, just like I don't believe that people here don't understand English at all. After a long time trying to find the simplest words for each other, he can only sign language in the end.

He drew a square with both hands, and then folded it into a circle and placed it in the middle. After thinking about it, I realized that he was gesturing the Japanese flag to ask me if I was Japanese.He understood my negation, but he couldn't understand the English language of China. Of course, I couldn't use sign language to represent the Chinese flag with a rather complicated pattern. He regrets not being able to communicate, but is still chugging along.This reminds me of the old people in my hometown who I knew in my childhood. They don’t believe that there are people in the world who can’t understand the local dialect at all. , Gold and stone are open.

Coming out of the toilet, I saw another earnest scene.Our photographer Dong Tao accidentally slipped and slipped in Beiji Village a few days ago. He injured his foot a little and was on crutches. He had a little difficulty in moving, so he stopped playing those games and sat in a corner drinking tea.It was also seen by the old people that he was a conversation partner who was not suspected of disturbing him. Three old men and two old ladies surrounded him.The old lady was obviously summoned in a hurry just now. The old people used gestures to ask Dong Tao the reason for his injury, but Dong Tao couldn't explain to them that there was no other special reason except carelessness.They gesticulated and gesticulated, and finally they gesticulated with an undeniable reason: it must have been injured by skiing.Then all the old people competed to describe their skiing experience. One old man seemed to have been injured, and he was already teaching Dong Tao how to take care of himself as an injured person.

When the language is not enough but the enthusiasm is enough, the only way is to follow the other party in a muddle, and never explain things clearly.Seeing the scene in front of me, I suddenly became enlightened, and found that I usually want to explain some things clearly.What the old man wants tonight is to talk to a stranger, to talk to a stranger who got hurt, to talk to a stranger who they presumably got hurt from skiing, to talk to someone who can remind them of their skiing experience and their injury. It is enough for strangers to talk, to talk on cold winter nights, to talk in their hometown.If our poor Dongtao has to explain things clearly without knowing Finnish, it will be extremely difficult, and second, it will spoil the interest of the old people, why bother.

From this I learned that in many cases, interest is more important than truth.I used to wonder why so many people were unhappy when I insisted on the truth of certain things, but now I understand, people are very interested. These old people had a lot of fun gesticulating tonight, and this kind of gesticulating was their enjoyment, including gesticulating strangers they didn't know at all and who were going to leave soon. Traveling makes us forever strangers everywhere. When the old people are gesturing to us, it suddenly occurs to us that we have been gesturing to people we are not familiar with.Gestures to each other, constant farewell, speech is not smooth but full of interest, leaving each other's thoughts, leaving eternal guessing, this is travel.

After three hours of tossing and turning in a daze, I finally heard a hello, and the train was coming.We bid farewell to the old man and went outside, only to realize that we had completely forgotten the weather and environment during these three hours.The biting cold immediately made our hands and faces ache, and after a while, they were completely numb.In such a hopeless cold, there is only one warm public mobile home, and the gathering of people is really extremely precious.This is something that those of us who come from the most populous places in the world often forget. Thanks to this station that I encountered at the end of this trip. It summed up the excitement of our journey with extraordinary desertedness. It told us in the depths of the snow that the most thirsty and most easily lost thing for human beings is the mutual encounter and warmth between the same kind. Even if the language barrier, the origin is unknown.

When the late night train starts, we will sleep soundly in the cold wilderness.There must be a dream, and the starting point is mostly those old people. As for the end of the dream, it may be a siren, or a half-way stop. After waking up and looking through the window, there is no one in sight.