nerves in an empty city

A lone tourist wanders the streets. All the inhabitants have fled the city. Finns have a strange urge to live close to grass, wind, sun and even rain during the short but intense summer of the North, and so they pack the car full of spouses, kids, dogs, barbecue meat and beer as soon as they can get out of work on Friday afternoon and head out to a humble cottage somewhere along the coast or at a lakeside. Finns have also seen to it that they have the world's longest vacations, so nobody seems to be doing any work from mid-June to the beginning of August.

Except for me of course. Somebody has to be hospitable to the tourists. But I hear that call of the wild too. Today I was restless, sad, anguished even, for no obvious reason. I tried all remedies known to woman: food, chocolate, coffee, shopping, chatting, more coffee. But the only thing that finally helped was the park. Sitting down for fifteen minutes surrounded by grass, trees and sun and all my nerves took a holiday.