Submitted by Maryann S.

Although this "adventure" happened not to me, but to my brother, it certainly qualifies as a trip to the lowest depths of a foreign clime. My brother is an avid world-traveler. Even before he was twenty-five, he often took language courses to get idiom and culture introductions to a country he was visiting. In a German language school, he met an airline flight attendant from Finland and together they planned to get together some months later to cruise from Stockholm to Helsinki. And such a cruise they had - the sights, the food, the music, the romance!

It went so well, they’d almost agreed to travel on to Russia, but my brother demurred, explaining that his job at a New York commercial bank would suffer. They parted amicably at her friend’s apartment in Helsinki. Before his flight left Helsinki, my brother wrestled with the inner dialogue between his romantic and practical selves regarding the serendipity of continuing on with this once-in-a-lifetime-girl vs. the need to pay rent. He finally decided "what the hell?" and returned to the friend’s apartment with the good news that yes he would go to Russia.

The flight attendant was not home alone sobbing because her American boyfriend had gone home. Oh no, she was eating dinner with a man. Apparently this flight attendant’ life was so imbued with serendipity, she had chanced to connect with not only my brother, but also this other man, who after a tense confrontation and fists flying, identified himself as our girl’s fiancé .

The Finnish police came and carefully weighed the evidence as presented by two qualified, honorable Finnish persons and one person who was not Finnish. You can guess who went to Finnish jail for the week-end just when the U.S. Embassy was unfortunately closed. You can guess who ate pickled herring and beets for three days while his no-refund air ticket expired. This former Eagle Scout got no medals for three long days in a jail where no one spoke English.

Most ironically, the Finns wished to prosecute him for scheming to remain in Finland illegally. Duh. The only reason he was still there was because he was .... behind bars already. Come Monday when the Embassy got involved, his travail ended. But there have been repercussions in his personality ever since. Once very competitive, he now chokes whenever he’s about to cross the Finnish line.

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