My parents separated soon after I was born, so I left Helsinki when I was a year old. My mother took me to Paris and then other places throughout Western Europe.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I was very fortunate to grow up with parents who love to travel, so I traveled from a young age. My dad's a heart surgeon and goes to conferences all over the world. By the time I was seven, I traveled outside the country for the first time. We went to Paris. The next year, we went to London, and then Brussels.
My parents got divorced when I was around a year old. My dad was essentially a nonentity in my life until I got to be about 16 or so. My mom was a flight attendant for PanAm, so I moved all over the world. London, Rio de Janeiro.
My mother arrived in Brussels in 1938 from a small town near Krakow. But strangely enough, in 1942 or 1943, she was taken back to Auschwitz, which was just 30 miles from where she grew up. Her parents died there and a lot of her family.
I took time off from school and traveled to Italy when I was 19, living with my extended family members. I must have slept in 30 different houses those months, taken in by people who'd never even met me.
My parents separated when I was younger.
My mother would take groups of students to different countries and always brought us along, so by the time I was 10, I had been to Russia, China, Nicaragua and several other countries.
When I came to America from Sweden, Mother and I, we went to Chicago where our relatives lived.
My parents were both from Scotland, but had been resident in Lower Canada some time before their marriage, which took place in Montreal; and in that city I spent most of my life.
With my mother, I moved from one household to another before settling in the eastern part of Finland, in the city of Kuopio.
Most of my father's life consisted of traveling to almost every part of Europe.