My train from Saint Petersburg to Helsinki was scheduled to leave at 6:40 AM, which meant a very early start. Given the insanity of Russian traffic, I assigned the same amount of time to get to the train station as it took to get from the train station. Figuring everything would be in Russian, I also had 30 minutes of getting lost time, so I was leaving the hotel at 5:15. That meant I’d get a chance to see the city at the most quiet hours. It’s another good way to get a sense of a place you’re visiting for the first time.
Stepping out of the hotel, I saw the streets were totally empty, so I was thinking maybe I had overestimated the problems of Russian driving. The hotel called a cab and it was there in few minutes. The cabbie was right out of central casting. Skinny, twitchy, leather jacket that was popular in the 70’s. Of course, he was smoking. Russians don’t smoke as much as the Chinese, but it is close. It’s not just the older people. Young Russians seem to love smoking. I guess vaping has not caught on with them yet.
Anyway, we head off and a few blocks into what I think will be a quick trip, we almost hit another taxi. Both slam on the brakes. My cabbie mutters something that I just assumed was an epithet appropriate to the moment. Then he leaps from the taxi and starts screaming at the other cabbie, who had leaped from his taxi. I was suddenly feeling like I was in one of those YouTube videos of Russian drivers. I thought they were going to go at it in the empty street, the way the two of them were screaming and pointing.
In a few minutes, one made the universal hand gesture signifying he was done with the other guy. That got the universal gesture for “you mad?” from the other cabbie. My taxi driver got back in and said something I just guessed meant “That guy is a fucking asshole” so I nodded and he seemed satisfied with the response. He then took off like the cops were coming and we had something close to a carnival ride to the station. He made two Russian U-turns, which they love, but got me to the station on time…
The Russian train station was another fine example of Hollywood tropes about the Soviet Union proving to be hilariously true. For starters, it is a dump. Second, the guards are old and fat and about as energetic as basset hounds. You have to go through security, which meant putting my bags on a conveyor belt about three feet long. It looked like a small x-ray machine you see at the airport, but the person manning it was asleep, so who knows if it even works. Then I walked through a metal detector, which did not work.
I know it did not work as I had a pocket full of Russian coins, some Euros, my phone, wallet and passport. The fat lazy Russian guard stopped me and pointed at what looked like the little basket you would normally put all your metal stuff before walking through the metal detector. I put my phone in it. I then picked it up and he waved me over to a waiting area. There were no lights on the metal detector and I did not hear it beep a single time in the 30 minutes waiting in the station. Old weird Russia is real…
Perhaps it is the residue of the Cold War and half a life of propaganda about Russians, but I had a strange sense of relief leaving Russia. Once the final customs check was done around Vyborg, I realized I had been pretty tense all morning. Part of it was the lack of sleep, for sure, but the strangeness of Russia had something to do with it too. There’s an unpredictable inefficiency to Russia that keeps you on edge. Throw in the fact that they use a different alphabet and it is like being on another planet at times.
It’s probably the closest any of us can come to understanding how it is like for Somalis in the West. In Russia, I did not understand anything. I can noodle my way through writing in Latin and Germanic rooted languages. It’s not precise, but close enough to feel some comfort and familiarity. Cyrillic is hopeless, so being in Russia is like being an illiterate, who does speak the local tongue. That’s not a bad description of life for most migrants, but especially the East Africans our rulers enjoy dumping into your neighborhood…
Back in Helsinki, my choice was to grab a train to the airport or take a taxi. My next leg was to rent a car and drive to the city of Turku. Since I had no idea where the car rental area was, I grabbed a taxi and sure enough, the driver was Somali. He was a younger guy, probably in his mid-20’s. His English was not great, but it was good enough. As with the Nigerian taxi driver the other day, I quickly found myself slamming in the reality of an 80-something IQ. He was struggling with the basics of his duties.
On the trip to the airport, he kept asking me questions about America. Some of his “cousins” live in Minnesota. He was hoping to immigrate to America, but his cousins tell him Minnesota is colder than Finland, so he was thinking Miami. He wanted to know what type of free housing they have in Miami. His free apartment in Espoo is too small. I’m guessing he was in some sort of public housing that was not exactly free, but then again, I would not be surprised if the Finns provide free housing to their conquerors.
As I was listening to him, the thought of maybe grabbing the wheel and smashing the both of us into oncoming traffic came to mind. I would be making a sacrifice for the good of my people, but that would mean my life was only worth one Somali. Perhaps if we were in a bus full of his cousins, it would make sense. Instead, I told him that Miami was very expensive and the Cubans were extremely racist. The racism stuff seemed to alarm him, suggesting they learn that stuff as soon as they set foot in the West.
That is something we Americans don’t fully appreciate. The rest of the world studies us, as America is the empire. Those of us in the dissident right understand that we are no more important to the imperial ruling class than a Somali herdsman, but those Somalis don’t understand this. To them, we really do look alike. As far as he was concerned, I was an ambassador from the Imperial Capital. My bet is my taxi driver asked every American he met about the places he sees on snap chat.
That is the other thing I learned from him. They love snap chat. All Somalis use snap chat to stay in touch with each other all over the world. This is something Steve Sailer observed back during the Merkel’s Millions crisis. The internet and social media apps that allow morons to get on-line has brought the fringe closer to the core, in terms of them knowing about us. These people see what we have and they want it, so they do what they must to get here. Social media is turning out to be a doomsday machine…
I picked up a nice Volvo at the airport and headed out to Turku. Once you get outside of Helsinki, you’re suddenly in what looks like New Hampshire or Vermont. The E18 is like an American state highway or the rural part of an interstate. The countryside is very nice, if you are the sort that likes driving the countryside. I was reminded of my many trips through New England in winter. I miss those drives as I love winter and I love the New England countryside in late winter. It’s peaceful, beautiful and clean….
My very first impression of Torku is it looked like Chapel Hill North Carolina, a quaint college town. After a few blocks, that gave way to thoughts of Newark New Jersey, as it got dirty and grimy, with lots of people standing around for no reason. There were more blacks than I saw anywhere in Finland, plus some North Africans. My hotel turned out to be a lot like where I stayed in Newark last year. Torku is not Newark and it is no overrun with Africans or even close to it. It’s still white, just downscale from Helsinki.
After checking in, I was in need of sleep, but I did a walk around anyway, figuring that would put in me in the right frame of mind for a long nap. If I had to guess, it is smaller cities like Torku where resistance to multiculturalism is growing. Not only are there more strangers here, they are more obvious. In big Cloud People cities like Helsinki, they use the cost of living as a barrier between themselves and multiculturalism. That does not work as well in small towns and rural areas. The natives see the truth every day.
After my nap, having a beer at a pub I found, I fell into conversation with a couple of Finns who were late-30’s, maybe early-40’s. They were nice and apparently educated. They knew the dissident terrain surprising well, as they became somewhat enthusiastic about the topic of immigration. Of course, alcohol loosens the tongue by removing inhibition, which is dangerous with the Finns. They drink like Japanese businessmen. That made for an interesting few hours of talk from people holding a lot in every day.
There is an awakening here, like everywhere in the West. That’s the term you hear in Europe among dissidents and nationalist. In America, we use red-pill to describe the feeling when your eyes open to this reality. For Europeans, it is more like they are waking up from a long dream, between when the lights went out in Europe a century ago and the Million Muslim invasion welcomed by Angela Merkel. For a tiny country like Finland to take in over 100,000 violent morons from over the horizon was a giant clanging alarm.
Z, greetings from the party that we commenters are having in your uninhabited house. It’s really raging. I wonder if we can get this place cleaned up before you return. Frip is as wild as you might have guessed. Calsdad is lecturing us about the free rider problem regarding our prodigious supply of alcohol. Derb is singing loudly in Chinese on the patio out back. I hope your neighbors can someday forgive you for this.
Are you paid up on your homeowner’s insurance?
Don’t worry. I’ll take down the swastikas from the windows before we leave.
We should take up a collection and keep you on the road. These are approaching PJ O’Rourke “Holidays in Hell” quality.
Couldn’t agree more Saml.
There definitely is an awakening happening in Finland, and I’m not talking about the secret handshake society meeting where you are probably going. The parliamentary elections are next week, and there is a general atmosphere of great dissatisfaction with the ruling establishment. Plenty of normies are starting to feel that the old parties are completely out of touch with the common people. It’s not just the immigration, though that is a big part of it. All the old parties and the mainstream media are raving about the climate change and how Finland has to save the world. Regardless of what… Read more »
That’s encouraging, but the Finns are going to learn what we did in the US: We aren’t voting our way out of this.
“That’s encouraging, but the Finns are going to learn what we did in the US: We aren’t voting our way out of this.” Well, when it comes to the population replacement, Finland might very well be one of the countries that can stop it by voting. It was only 30 years ago when the population was still basically 99 % Finns. Third World immigration only began in the early 90s, and was slow at first, so Finland is several decades behind other Western European countries in this regard. We are definitely starting to see the negative effects of this idiotic… Read more »
Multiculturalism, open borders, global warming, gender neutral “people,” etc., are just different terms or manifestations of communism.
No different than Bernie Sanders, your typical NYC / Brooklyn communist POS , now calling himself a democratic socialist.
All of these religious ideologies promote the dissolution of the family and of nation states, of traditional social mores, and imposition of restrictions and prohibitions on what can be said, shown, heard, and seen.
The promoters and adherents of these ideologies are STALINISTS, no matter what terminology they use to obscure this fact.
Not Stalinists, Bioleninists.
The use of the Chinese word baizuo for crazed self hating progs is a good idea. No love for the Chinese but we need a short pithy word for those types. We gave our manufacturing away, at least we can steal a word back.
Europe might well be able to vote its way out, other than maybe Germany or France. Even the UK might manage it . Europe is mostly White unlike the US and has a string ethnic and cultural identity The US however isn’t going to able to do this, its a gumbo of different groups and even similar ethnic groups disagree on far too many things That said, the Dissident Right suffers from a distinct live and let live ethos which is stupid. If you have power you can stop degeneracy in its tracks and I promise you the next time… Read more »
Live and let live has gotten us the grotesque levels of degeneracy we have in society today. Stuff that was rated ‘X’ 40 years ago is now common on TV and movies – take the SAW series for example. That’s how far the Overton window has moved. No one today outside some hard line Christian groups and Muslims will even condemn Homosexual marriage and trannies. It’s just as acceptable among DR as it is among the Hollywood set. You don’t even see HBD doyens like Sailer condemning nasty old men sharing a bathroom with little girls just shows you how… Read more »
I heard the party fractioned some time back, what’s the story with that?
Uh, that’s a long story. I’ll try to give the short version. The party was founded back in the 90s by a chap called Timo Soini, who was the leader of the party until 2017. Soini is your run of the mill opportunistic populist who will say anything to get elected and betrays his supporters immediately after he gets any real power. Under Soini the Finns party was a sort of general purpose protest party that anyone could vote who was fed up with the bland main stream parties that you could hardly tell apart. Immigration critics also joined the… Read more »
Thanks, that was interesting. I’ve been following Swan of Tuonela, but she stopped making videos shortly after the party split and her (Algerian) boyfriend entered politics. I asked, because I’m extremely paranoid about sellouts and managed opposition. Shortly after this the migration crisis hit Europe and thousands of asylum seekers started pouring to Finland from Sweden. Soini could have demanded the other two parties to close the border, but he didn’t want to risk breaking the government and losing comfy job as a minister, and did nothing. This mirrors almost exactly what happened with the Danish People’s Party: shortly before… Read more »
The Swan of T. does a weekly YouTube show on Ramzpaul’s channel. The Zman has been on their show. Her name is Tiina Vik (sp?).
If only our ruling elites would shoot themselves in the head, rather than the foot.
The Elite would rather die than give up social status which leaves collapse or electoral miracle as the only option other than war to the knife, knife to the hilt
Loss of social status IS death for them. Hence, they will kill to maintain it. I have said before and elsewhere that if our masters had to resort to dropping nukes on their own countries in order to survive politically, they will not hesitate.
Fair point though I don’t fear nukes, no one has done this since they won’t survive doing it and the people who control them aren’t the people who want to use them. The ultra rich may also find large sections of the military and police who come from groups they despise unresponsive to orders as well. Fig of war old chap Anyway these days we can’t even find sober and honest people to sit in the nuclear silos anymore Besides the US may well not be a nuclear power in a few years. We use tritium for our nuclear triggers,… Read more »
I hope Z is telling all these people that he meets he is writing a travelogue and gives them the blog address. They and many of their family members would most certainly come to the blog the read a American’s impression of their town. It would be funny as hell if he left little islands of woke Scandinavians like bread crumbs along his trail.
The contradiction I keep running into is the exposure problem. When we are nice and separate, whites start getting weird ideas about the hordes over the horizon. It’s only when we see The Other that we realize how similar we really are and that we are on a team. Racism isn’t a prejudice, its a postjudice. Even if we were to prevail, what’s stopping our descendants from regressing?
The yo-yo of history is disturbing.
Racism isn’t a prejudice, its a postjudice.
True. Well spotted.
When people get rich all they have left to give them that dopamine rush is social signalling and in group posturing. Our rulers being uniformly rich have nothing better to do that than to virtue signal to each other and as loving refugees and migrants is virtuous, we get a lot of that This would suggest that if the Left could be convinced getting rid of refugees was high status, they’d be all in but class prejudice , this being something lower classes want, makes this hard There is also a faction of the establishment who cannot have more expensive… Read more »
So the Somalian cab driver lives in a place called Espoo, eh?
I bet in another three years it’ll be called Esevenmorepoo.
Of course, alcohol loosens the tongue by removing inhibition, which is dangerous with the Finns.
So Jukki meets his old friend Pekka from school, and suggests they grab a drink. They get a hand of some bottles, sit down and start drinking. They work their way through the first bottle of vodka and start out on the next.
Halfway though the second bottle, Jukki says “So, how are you doing?
Pekka eyes him suspiciously. “Do you want to drink, or do you want to talk?”
Z: “100,000 violent morons”. LOL. Someone MUST title their next anti-immigration book that. I wonder if Ann Coulter has the crazy balls to do it.
In many way, Europe today is like an old Russian fishing trawler. Every day, the Captain goes down to check on things below. It’s hot, it smells bad and there’s oily water sloshing around. The crew smiles, tips their hats in respect and points to the leaks and complains about parts they need to keep things running properly. The Captain says nothing. He smiles, returns the nod and goes back up to the wheel house. Then one day, as he descends to inspect the engine room, he notices the water is halfway up the ladder. Yet he is somehow in… Read more »
“Given the insanity of Russian traffic,”
Someone noted on Sailer’s blog a few years back that the Fast & Furious movies would be treated as documentaries in Russia.
I freely admit I have an addiction to watching dashcam car chases. Russia is like a meth hit,
This is sort of off topic, but what if we declared war on the central banks? Drop bombs on them. Kill their owners and employees? I would vote for someone who made that their platform. Carry on.
Make a few trillion counterfeit dollars, and you won’t need bombs. Or start a viable cryptocurrency.
Full reserve banking buddy
And Zman, get your sauna experience. It’s not gay if it’s in Scandinavia.
Yup. The Scanwegians have a hard time being cheerful, Gay is far beyond them. but dear God, they are great at morose.
I know the travelogue stuff is supposed to be “light” but it’s providing some pretty big insights. I think the benefit of going somewhere like Russia and not just exploring the “postcard” core is that it helps counter the hysterical/interventionist neocon-neoliberal baloney about how we’re always five minutes away from being conquered by some country (usually Russia or China). Realizing a place has its own severe internal problems, and seeing those problems firsthand, is a good countering tonic to the fear-mongering we get daily here. And then there’s the fact that, contra the stereotype, most foreigners like Americans but hate… Read more »
Being a soldier stationed in Germany during Dubya’s reign I got looks from the locals like I was a registered sex offender most of the time.
Well, you were a member of the occupation force, so by definition a threat to the local womenfolk. Women love victorious warriors, and the conquered menfolk resent that.
Americans were an occupying/conquering force in Germany in the Marshall Plan/Postwar years, and there was some justification for our presence through the Cold War (and the guys who were stationed there during that time had a hell of a lot of fun). By the early aughts, though,we were squatters, which doesn’t really get Western European women hot and bothered, unless you’re a Muslim loafer who might force them into wearing a hijab (being forced to wear more clothes is the postmodern Western female’s equivalent of bodice-ripper fantasies for previous generations of women).
being forced to wear more clothes is the postmodern Western female’s equivalent of bodice-ripper fantasies.
It’s the forcing itself that’s their thing. If you forced them to wear Mickey Mouse ears, they’d squeak with delight and shop for cheddar cologne. They’re totally ready for a new, Lebensborn program.
Man I think you’re on to something there. I was really disturbed by some of the reaction to the New Zealand mosque shooting. It seems from browsing Twitter that Kiwis came up with a ScarvesInSolidarity where New Zealand women fell all over themselves to don headscarves. The lady PM of NZ was photographed multiple times wearing a headscarf. If a white Christian man had opined that women should wear headscarves these same women would get the vapors and shout about sexism and oppression and body and slut shaming until they were hoarse. Yet they fall all over themselves to meet… Read more »
You’ve hit on it, Corn.
Political correctness is itself a racist ideology. Hating on white people gives the modern social justice warrior that sense of power that little people crave.
No one is littler than Western white women.
If a white Christian man had opined that women should wear headscarves…
It’s the opining that’s the problem. You need to order them.
“It’s the forcing itself that’s their thing. If you forced them to wear Mickey Mouse ears, they’d squeak with delight and shop for cheddar cologne.”
Damn it! YOU caused me to blow coffee through my nose! Damn it! Felix….you’re cracking me up, man! Afraid you’re too close to the truth about women. I’d better wander off quick before I get into trouble. PS….do enjoy your worldly opining. Good on. Definitely not something I would hear and discuss in Southern Utah.
Z should lead tour groups through the Baltics. Like a red-pilling National Review cruise. The Z Cruise.
Despite conditions that are borderline functional in Russia, some of the best engineers I’ve worked with during the past few decades have been Russians.
The problem isn’t know-how.
anyone pushing that Nazbol shit has no idea what the “bol” part does to otherwise functional societies.
In southern California, among the few white workers you meet day-to-day are Russian or Ukranian. I’m happy to see fellow whites, even if they’re foreigners, because their competency dwarfs the typical beaner.
> Perhaps it is the residue of the Cold War and half a life of propaganda about Russians, but I had a strange sense of relief leaving Russia
Nah, it’s perfectly normal. I felt relief each time I was crossing the border of this country. And I’ve been vor and grew up there. Tension is just part of everyday life. I didn’t realize the scale of it until I immigrated.
“They drink like Japanese businessmen”. One thing about this is that about the only time a Japanese businessman is free to speak his mind is when he is drunk. Everyone excuses what people say when someone is drunk, so a lot of guys will get whomever they want to say something frank to into a bar, have a couple of drinks, and pretend to be drunk whether they are or not, just to get the thing off their chest or to make the request they want to make or demand a raise. They use drinking the way other cultures use… Read more »
Yeah, if you’re an alcoholic, Japan or East Europe are bad, bad…..BAD places to visit. I was in the infantry in the ‘70s and ‘80s, I’m no stranger to hard drinking. But these cats, they can’t hold their liquor and they drink hard. It’s getting a tad better in Japan; the kids are slowly wiping up. The old style salaryman was expected to work himself to death during the day and drink himself into a stupor at night. But it’s sad, really is. There’s quite a few young men who’ve lost their fathers to that void. Were you a teacher… Read more »
Speaking of Newark, I’m reminded of the first time I had to change NJT trains there outbound from Manhattan. I didn’t realize my connection would simply be across the platform — wouldn’t those trains be running in the other direction? — so I descended into the main station, which was completely empty and quiet and looked like it had suffered a zombie apocalypse fifteen years earlier except for the fact that one of the electronic displays was still working. Not a soul around to ask where I should go. Maybe I was supposed to head over to that other set… Read more »
Two steps out of the station doors, I had one of the most unpleasant experiences of my life and felt lucky that I managed to escape back up to the platform.
So are you going to share?
Ohh for fux sake it’s not THAT bad. I worked at Prudential right there @ Broad and Market for almost 3 years in the early 90s. Been in and out of that station hundreds of times. I think there’s 4 platforms, plus PATH. Newark PD keeps a strong presence.
My advice is to look and act with purpose. Add some swagger to your step, so them dumb-ass f’n Moolies can tell they are not dealing with an easy target like Mort Goldman. (Hell….. I grew up in California….but I picked up on the local vibe pretty quick. LOL)
Z, it gets more pronounced the further north you go. Turku is big city in comparison with say Rovaniemi.
The Finns have decent instincts. They gave the Saami people (think Australian aborigines) a largely symbolic parliament, but never granted them land rights
Do I detect some empathy for our african invaders ? Believe on at least two occasions there’s been comments about somalis having difficulties in their new occupied land. Make no mistake have no love for Russians. Visit any Finnish Cemetery and walk the rows of headstones from the Winter War . That being said would still tolerate the company of a Russian over some “rape-ape” As a white man visiting other white countries I respect the people and local customs, contribute to the local economy and obey the law. Doing so ( although after some initial apprehension common with any… Read more »
Well this travelogue helped me finalize my plans for first European trip. Ireland it is!
I’m staying right here in good old SW Virginia ..
I wouldn’t bother;Ireland is dreary
There’s an unpredictable inefficiency to Russia that keeps you on edge.
That’s what made it one hell of a fun place to live for a while.
Yeah, Russia has its own charm. But after a few months you are happy to get back to a country where things just work.
So, I’m guessing Uber is NOT in many of these places, or is there something about taking the local Taxi that nets you a little more color on the trip?
From the April 3rd “Travelogue: Tallinn” post, one of the commenters explained the taxi situation in Finland, which was very interesting. In case you missed it: Make: “Well Z, you arrived to Finland just in time to see the beginning of the collapse in the standards of Finnish taxi service. The taxi business used to be heavily regulated until recently, which meant reliable and good customer service, but also very high prices. Most of the drivers were Finns, and even the immigrants working as taxi drivers knew their job. The government liberalized the taxi market just last year, and now… Read more »
Do London Taxi drivers still have to do “The Knowledge”?
Yes.
Following the travels on Google Maps. Hwy to Turku looks exactly like Connecticut turnpike. Helsinki looks nice and clean but very modest architecture.
Struggled so much with his duties, he got you to your destination safe and sound?
If only your leaders ‘struggled’ exactly that way with their duties, you would not be so morose.
Do you believe that the standard deviation IQ gap is real?
Nigeria: Population 200 mln
No nuclear power plants. No Nobel Prize winners in the hard sciences. Inbred Pakistan has achieved both, with nil oil reserves.
White guilt shouldn’t be a thing, but black guilt definitely should be.
What’s with the attitude? Nigeria has a thriving aviation industry.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crqZsAi5yhA
That video made me feel so sorry for those poor dumb bastards.