For most Americans, 9/11 was something they remember while glued to their television screens or worse yet, witnessing the distruction of the World Trade Center towers or the Pentagon first hand. I was living in Helsinki Finland at the time and only a few days prior had just returned from a trip back to San Francisco.

I was staffed on a project in Helsinki, helping deploy a major portal and wireless community worldwide. It was near the end of our workday (GMT+2) when some Finnish colleagues notified us ex-pats about the first plane crash. We rolled in a television to our office and sat there glued to it as our co-worker translated the Finnish report for us English speaking folks. As we watched, we witnessed the second plane hit live. I for one, had little emotion as I tried to figure out exactly what I had just seen. It took days for it to really sink in.

We had 2 ex-pats that were actually stuck back in the US as they had just flown back upon my return to Helsinki (rotating our leave time). I recall my friend and his concerns because his wife was back in New York City. He and I both had just returned to Helsinki while other ex-pats were taking off. We all coordinated to attempt to find a news website that wasn’t saturated with traffic and I recall refreshing the page every minute or two for more headlines across the country. There was a new post it seemed every minute we refreshed the screen and whomever saw it first would call it out to the others. My friend reached his wife and everything was alright!

That night, and many nights thereafter, I remained glued to my television in my flat every day after work, sometimes until 3am. I recall one day while at lunch at a restaurant near our office given many at our table were Americans, the restaurant asked all patrons to exercise a moment of silence to honor America; it was an amazing gesture. The worldwide support and compassion that came out of such tragedy was overwhelming, it is just so unfortunate that it often takes such horrible events to unite people.

After days of numbness, feeling like we were simply watching a movie as the event unfolded, it was all too surreal. The feelings finally hit a couple days later after limited sleep and continued hard work on our project. At first it was sadness, then anger towards whomever would do such a thing. Being over 5000 miles from America and watching the whole thing develop from afar was a unique perspective as I hear others’ accounts of that day.

I’ve never really shared my account, and it’s been years, so I just thought I would post a little note to say thanks to all those from abroad who supported the US and demonstrated such kindness and compassion during a messed-up time.

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