In January 2011 I arrived to Helsinki and I planned to stay here 5 months. But I’m still here and I will stay at least till my graduation. I guess I have a lot of things to tell. 🙂  In a nutshell: after being an exchange student I came back as an au-pair, later I started to study in a Finnish college, but I didn’t like it so I changed. I used to in Espoo  for three years –  then I have moved back to Helsinki…As Finland has played an important role in my life I’d like to start this blog with my feelings about this country.
Why you just decide to give up your completely ordinary life and take the risk to move in a foreign country? Seriously, I don’t exactly know why I love Finland so much, I just cannot stop to love it since the moment I arrived here.
I came here for the first time three years ago as an exchange student. I think everyone who is in higher education should take the chance and study a semester abroad. Even though it sounds like a cliche but it can broaden your mind and change your life completely. That happened to me too. I always have  been the ‘good girl’ and I have never thought about living abroad – I had exact imagination about my career and about my future. Before finishing my studies I’ve just applied to a scholarship abroad, I thought it would look like amazing on my CV. My goal was to choose a country whose culture is more different than  my home country’s.  Since I speak German fluent all the German speaking countries were excluded, I had to improve my English. I prefer cold weather than hot, so Finland seemed to be the ideal choice for me. I cannot describe the euphoria what I felt after getting the scholarship – I couldn’t stop reading about Finland.
As I came here this euphoria continued during very day. Finland is a country where everything works: I have never had problems with administration, with the public transport or with simple everyday matters. Finns work effectively and they are usually nice if you have any question. That’s true that they are shy but not in a negative way. I really enjoy that they avoid stupid small talks and don’t whine about their problems. And they are very polite too. The best thing what helps you is that almost everybody speaks English fluently. They have their cute accent but you can understand everything what they say.  Once even a homeless men switched to English to ask me for a cigarette as I’ve told him that I don’t speak Finnish at all.
I love Finnish culture. I love those silent and hard-working people with a great sense of humor. A lot of foreigners tell that Finns are too closed and they don’t talk or they are rude. No way! You just have to be patient and don’t force a friendship or a relationship. They don’t wait for a phone call from a friend every day, they like to have their own personal space and they respect others’. They don’t call you every day because they don’t want to disturb you. They aren’t too talkative for a while but once they consider you as a friend they will show their ‘real face” and let you show yours. This mutual respect is the starting point of a great friendship or a relationship. At the beginning I felt that I’m really outsider and nobody will accept me, but after a while I found great friends and I still think that Finns are amazing on the way they are.
They do respect each other as well, they are honest and reliable. They always buy a ticket in the public transport vehicles however they know that usually nobody checks them. If they find something on the street what doesn’t belong to them they take it to the police or to the office of the lost and found things. Seriously a lot of my fiends found there their lost phone or wallet.
Finns are also tidy, all the public vehicles are usually clean, so the waiting rooms and other public places.
Besides the culture and people I also like that Helsinki is pretty safety. Of course there are places what are more dangerous but I often just walk home alone in the middle of the night. I never get robbed or attacked and especially on the weekends there are plenty of policemen on the streets maintaining the public safety.
The landscape is very amazing too. Can you imagine a capital with a lot of parks, lakes and a beautiful seashore? And the forests, they look like magical places. The countryside is more different than the capital region but it has its beauty too, the neverending forests, the clean sky, the thousands of lakes..It is fascinating how the modern world meets with nature! Finns like and respect the nature much, they are somehow ‘forest people’: enjoy to be outside, to go fishing, picking up berries, hunting and so on.
Of course living here has its bad sides too, my biggest problem is that even though Finns are friendly they don’t accept foreigners completely. I won’t say that they are racist or xenophobic but sometimes it makes me really upset to feel that I’m an outsider. But I prefer to write a separate post about it.
A lot of people think that it can be horrible to survive the long and cold winters – I won’t lie that I’m jumping happily when it snows in April, but it isn’t as bad as you imagine. 😉 It’s amazing to have four seasons, to observe the long days in the summertime and enjoy the lovely snowy days in winter. I love this country and if I will have the chance to work have after graduation I wouldn’t think about it. 🙂
pienipieceofme 