Moving abroad for Love and How I Did It in Covid-times

We had already agreed that I would move from Finland to live with my partner in the Netherlands, as news of a mysterious virus started to appear in the media in January 2020. As probably most other people, we didn’t at first pay much attention to what turned out to be a pandemic with massive global consequences. I was excited about moving abroad for love and selling my stuff in a relaxed manner. I was getting ready to leave Finland in the end of March. I booked the flight tickets and sent parcels to the Netherlands containing the bare essentials of my belongings. I went through every single item and pile of paper I had accumulated in my apartment in those roughly 14 years of living on my own, and sent away to Holland only clothes I knew for sure I would use and books I had not yet read but knew I wanted to.

In mid-March my apartment was already rather empty, and I was sitting on a mattress reading news about the Finnish government starting to react to this ever-growing virus in a stricter manner. My flight from Helsinki to Amsterdam was going to be in a week, but all of a sudden, the Finnish media was full of talk about a national emergency situation and closing the boarders as one precaution against the virus.

– No country is able to close its boarders in less than a week. You’ll be able to take the flight next week. It’s all just talk, said my Italian partner, hence demonstrating a very Italian attitude to politicians. His perspective was that the politicians just talk and what possibly happens, happens slowly. I disagreed. – This is Finland, and if they say they are going to shut down the country asap, it means it is going to happen NOW.

I changed my flights to a date that was a week earlier than the original one. This meant I had to pack the rest of my things very quickly, organize my landlady to come and to the final inspection of the flat earlier than we had planned, and get the final cleaning done in record speed. I spent my last night in Finland cleaning my windows and walls in the spring night, while watching documentaries about Henry the VIII and other English royalties to keep me up.

Next morning, after the house inspection with my landlady, I left the keys to her and left for the airport hours before the flight. I wanted to be there on the spot, monitoring the flight situation and following the story that was developing in the media. It was a national state of emergency, but all I cared for was being able to get that flight to Amsterdam. I couldn’t imagine not being able to be finally reunited with him!

I was neurotically checking the screens every ten seconds and observing with an increasing panic the notifications of CANCELLED appearing next to a number of flights. My flight to Amsterdam got off around 10pm on March 18, 2020, two hours before Finland declared its boarders closed.

The fact that no country is able to really close its boarders and that the flight traffic from and to Finland never fully ceased, is of course another matter. Then, I was under the impression that not catching this flight could mean getting stuck in Finland with no job and no apartment while being separated from my partner. Hence, when I was finally on board and the plane took off, I was feeling an overwhelming sense of relief.

The Lockdown

After my arrival, we spent the night in an airport hotel in Amsterdam. This already gave some signals of how service and travelling experiences would turn out to be in the following months. The breakfast buffet was closed and we were handed the breakfast in a bag to be eaten in our room; we were not allowed to spend time in the social spaces of the hotel; a hand disinfection gel bottle was placed strategically in the middle of the hotel lobby. Little did we know this was just the beginning.

So, I moved into my partner’s studio style apartment. One big open space downstairs and a little open space upstairs. No doors to be closed. It was here would spend the lockdown spring. Me looking for a job and he working from remote.

Whatever I imagined when preparing to move abroad for love, it wasn’t a global pandemic and three months in social isolation. Until June, we pretty much went outside once in a week to do some grocery shopping among locals that were socially distancing and even avoiding eye contact. All my job-seeking events and expat-related socialization opportunities were cancelled. Everything was cancelled. After months of a long distance relationship, it was just us, in one gigantic open space, 24/7 together.

It was challenging and interesting and special. A lot of things get triggered when you spend all the time together, without even the chance to close a door behind and take a moment for yourself. Here I was, in a new country where I don’t speak the language, after having left my home country, my job, my cats, my friends and my family behind in an escalated super-fast moving schedule due to a global pandemic. Things I would never have guessed that I had to still sort out with myself popped up, demanding for attention.

I’m very proud that we made it through these months and came out stronger than ever. We managed to advance a lot of things in our relationship and grow together into a true team. If I personally have to look for some reasons to why I was able to make this spring into an amazing experience instead of a complete disaster, I think it was because of some things listed in the next paragraph.

Easy to Say Now, But Here Are My Two Cents…

• We never gave up. We were persistent in working on things. If there was some painful memory, cultural programming, misunderstanding, or some other stuff popping up, we just sat and talked and talked and talked until everything was clear. We never left things undealt-with or skipped a conversation. Everything was laid onto the table, no matter how difficult it felt like.

• We expressed emotions: suppressing your feelings in extreme conditions doesn’t work. You can try and play cool for a day or two, but the emotions are going to emerge sooner than later. It’s best to just embrace them. Accept them and ride the wave. No emotion lasts forever, and once a feeling has been fully experienced and processed, it never comes back in the same form.

• We worked on things together and had common goals. We made a list of things we wanted to achieve together, both short-term and long-term. We made a plan of what values and interests we want to advance in our lives and what we would like to do separately and together. We started working together, remotely, on a project that consists of a series of smaller projects. This project is scientific in nature, as we are both researchers. We also dieted together and managed to reach our goal weights a little over a month into lockdown. The common goals made sure we always had plenty of things to talk about and do together. Especially since the whole world was only talking about Covid and one wasn’t able to open one a single newspaper or social media channel without being bombarded with Corona-related stories, it was crucially important to have some bigger long-term goals to focus on.

• I forced myself to some practices that helped me to stay balanced and positive in challenging circumstances. And when I say “forced”, I mean it. If I would only meditate, do thankfulness exercises, and say positive affirmations when I feel like it, I would never do these things when I actually benefit most of them. These are not the exact ones I used but boy, Florence Scovel Shinn’s affirmations are worth looking at!

• Laughter. When things are weird and challenging, it is too easy to be serious and let the little worries blow out of proportion. I noticed that my Finnish cultural background sometimes makes me way too serious, and I forget to take things lightly, laugh at myself and my petty little obsessions. When things are serious everywhere around you in the big world, you don’t want to take yourself too seriously. In this respect, I’ve learnt a valuable lesson or two from my Italian partner of how to take things with humor – a topic truly worthy of its own post.

• It was challenging not to be able to immediately start building a social network of my own. The job market was and is in a rut, and all social expat events except a few odd ones got cancelled. I found that just connecting with people online made a huge difference. Facebook groups and familiar YouTubers, my old friends and the friends of my partner became more precious than gold. We organized a few virtual aperitifs with his friends and that instantly made things feel easier. Connecting with people, giving the chance to new people and new friendships while cherishing the old ones made us keep our heads clear in the long months of social isolation.

What Next?

Moving abroad for love is now done, and we are advancing into late summer. The fall is only a couple of dozen soft summer nights away. Who knows what the fall will be like. At this point, we have been able to travel a little, to see Breda and the Hague in the Netherlands and take some trips to Italy. The months where a trip to the grocery store was the only moment we took some fresh air seem far in the past.

Perhaps the world is in lockdown again in the months to come. All I know is that love carries us through everything and there is nothing to be afraid of. When we don’t know what is ahead and everything that is familiar is not there to hang onto anymore, it’s important to find a resting place in the present moment and make ever more space for love.