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.