My best single memory from the University of Helsinki is from the beginning of the 1990s. While attending my Master’s seminar in 1990–91, I got to know the new side of the Main Building and the cloakroom porters Auli and Ritva. We would often chat for a few minutes before the evening light of the city faded out. The click-clack of knitting needles barely paused for a moment when one of them handed me my coat. When Christmas came, I received a pair of wool socks as a gift from Auli and Ritva. Maybe those white and blue socks, which were knit in the Main Building, represent the excessive cosiness I have experienced in that building, and with the Finnish language.

In general, the best part of being in the university is the sharing of ideas: being able to aimlessly develop ideas, for the sheer joy of developing them. I hope to bring something of that feeling to my docent teaching so that my lectures give students material for their café discussions, which are of course the best contexts for intellectual meandering.