Things I love about Finland

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adventures in Finland, beauty, cake, expat, expat life, finland, forest, friends, into the woods, kahvilla, lumikko, nature, sauna, things I like about Finland, things that make me happy

This is a small and incomplete list of things I love about Finland. More to come!

Disclaimer: these are my personal opinions and I am not assuming everybody shares them or they are 100% true/representative of Finland. You may have experienced things differently and I’d love to hear about it, but please don’t assume I am trying to speak about other people’s lives.

1.  Nature

These photos are from my last trip to Lapland. -25 and being in a cabin with no running water and electricity may seem a bit crazy to many people (including me before coming to Finland) but the beauty that surrounds you definitely makes it worth. The light is just indescribable, and like nothing you may seem in the Southern hemisphere. The sky so full of stars, it seems it may explode. The silence of mornings covered in snow and how scary it is to venture outside when it’s completely dark and the forest seems animated with noises you don’t recognize. Tracks everywhere, of every kind (and did you know kids in elementary school have to pass an exam on how to recognize each?) and reindeers trying to decide whether to flee or stay when you walk close to them.  In short, nature in Finland is beautiful in every season and my advice to anybody coming here is go North, go to Lapland, escape towns and civilization and head to the first (or last) cabin you can find. Finland’s true beauty is its nature, its forests and lakes, and if you have the chance you shouldn’t miss out.

2. People

I know, I should be complaining about Finnish people, how cold they are, how hard it is to make friends. But my experience (and many other expats’ as well) is that this is just a stereotype. I met a lot of warm, friendly and kind people and made many friends that I am going to miss a lot when I move away. Of course some people are not interested in getting to know you, but that happens everywhere and I appreciate Finnish slow but honest and straightforward approach to friendship. Moreover, people are not interested in how you live your life and are respectful of your privacy. This is so valuable to me: one of the things I disliked the most about Italy was the constant request of strangers to know about me and my life. Stepping on a bus or train and knowing it is very unlikely somebody is going to pester me all the time is a relief. You can have great conversations on trains in Italy, and I met some wonderful people this way, but most of the time you have no choice: many people do not care about your clear desire to be left alone and demand your cooperation (which can be taxing in long trips) or spend all their time talking on the phone/with other passengers. Trust me, on a 9 hours trip, silence will become very valuable. Plus, I may have been very lucky and I am sure many people have different experiences, but everybody I met have been welcoming and happy to help. So I can only vouch for Finnish people.

3. Kahvilla

This is a very small selection of some of the cafés I visited since I live in Finland. Despite drinking only tea and usually finding Finnish cake disappointing, I love the fact there are so many cafés and tea houses where you can sit in a warm and comfy environment and relax. It is very common to go out for coffee and cake, especially on Sunday and it’s one of those habits it was very easy to adopt (thanks also to my sweet tooth)

4. Sauna

Akseli Gallen Kallela In the sauna

Sauna, of course, couldn’t be forgotten. I have to admit I have become quite addicted to sauna (I usually go three times a week) and I cannot imagine how hard it is gonna be when I am going to move to a country without sauna. I have also internalized a little bit of Finnish mindset towards sauna: I get upset if people don’t respect the unwritten rules and when I was living in a student dorm full of exchange students I was adamant they had to respect the rules and even scolded some. Sauna is a holy place where you cleanse your body and mind and it makes you feel incredible. It’s a life savior in winter, but it is always pleasing, even in summer.

5. Finnish attitude to bodies and beauty

One thing that really surprised me was how unfazed people are by different bodies, and variables like age and weight, maybe because I have struggled with body image and self-esteem my whole life. My surprise diminished when I looked at Finnish magazines, and saw they were full of women of different sizes and ages, with very little Photoshop. Not enough diversity to represent the changing Finnish population, but still very different from Italian magazines, that are not only 100% white but also push for a very specific image of female beauty. Also, from what I can gather, the focus is on what these women can do, not on how they look like: they are often not dolled up, and nobody sees the need to cancel their wrinkles or alter their appearances. There are also fashion magazines which tend to be more similar to international ones, but at least there is some variety. Then I saw the way young and older women act in swimming pools and sauna, confident in their bodies and just nonchalant about them, obviously not caring too much about their appearance in a way that would be impossible in Italy (I remember looks, comments, general uneasiness and discomfort). I don’t know where this different attitude comes from, but I think sauna and the exposure all kids get to different bodies can only be a good thing. It seems like women are taught they can be much more than their bodies and this is a wonderful thing.

I am going to keep posting things I like about Finland, and if any of you want to join the dialogue I’d love to hear about yours.

Jenni Saarenkylä

Lappi

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adventures in Finland, etsy, finland, fleeting sensation, into the woods, lapland, lappi, lumikko, nature, outdoors, travel, vacation

Inari lake

Lapland is a land of mysteries and secrets. In those woods there are wolves, bears, wolverines, elks and foxes. On the streets lots of reindeers, peacefully minding their own business. You wonder how people lead their lives during winter, in those small log cabins lost in silence. And forests, and lakes and so much beauty. Sadly, the beautiful scenery is sometimes ruined by swarms of mosquitoes, but with the right clothes and tons of repellent it is manageable. I have only tasted a fraction of Lapland and still I know there is so much more, in those woods. The delicious smell of wooden sauna on your skin, the taste of lake water, hot chocolate made on an outdoor fire, cold mornings and magical nights when the sky turns pink and purple and there is no moon.

Lappi is also hiding broken hearts in small places, and being left with yourself for long times, gas stations that look like they belong in Minnesota and faces worn like badges of pride. I have the feeling we, as tourists, as visitors, cannot fully grasp it all. It is just a fleeting sensation, a split of a second when you feel something bigger or smaller than yourself happening so grandly all around you. I definitely have to return to Lapland, to taste their snow, to breathe in the woods, to see the fox brushing her tail against the mountains and causing sparkles to fly off into the sky (the Northern lights). I want more of this enchantment.

Back from Lappi I got this print, an adorable sleeping lumikko, made by this amazing Finnish artist living in England.

Lumikko – Jenni Saarenkyla

Jenni’s shop

I very much feel like a Small Animal living in a country of Big Animals.

“Do You See Piglet? Look At Their Tracks!”

It is a new, exciting feeling.

I also met Father Yule (or Santa Claus) and shared with him my Christmas wish. Now, also my secret is held captive in Lappi.

Snowflakes and sand

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adventures in Finland, finland, lumikko, snow, spring

This morning snowed again. They were tiny, almost invisible snowflakes but they were still there. Any hope of a real spring gets crashed every time. Like Finnish doctors, seasons are skittish. After so much time spent indoors I should mind more than I actually do, but I have come to appreciate this kind of weather. I’d love some sun, sure, but still, grey sky and rain fit my melancholic mood of the moment. I may be born in Sicily but it seems like I can keep up with cold and ice just fine. My mentor says it’s because I am affected by the Northern spirit, and it’s not meant as a compliment. Truth is I have always craved for forests, snow, a landscape as far away as possible from my homeland. My imagination was fueled by tales of far away imaginary lands, ice palaces, magic crystals, archers and berserk warriors, Ludwig II and Mitteleuropa, royal families and gold, decadence and metaphysical horrors. Finland is nothing like my childhood fantasies, but I still love it. And just to prove my mentor wrong, a song that I have been listening to obsessively in the last few hours, a piece of home, and a homage to my Mediterranean roots.

Lumikko’s adventures in Finland part I

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adventures in Finland, broken leg, broken tibia, doctors, expat, finland, finnish doctors, finnish hospitals, Italian abroad, lumikko

So, I finally decided to start a blog. My first blog adventure was largely unsuccessful, mostly because I only used my blog to leave passive aggressive messages to my friends and was totally unable to understand html (that hasn’t changed). But I thought that it could be fun to have a blog again, so here I am.

so, why Lumikko? I am living in Finland at the moment, and, even though I haven’t made any progress at learning Finnish, I fell in love with this word. I think it has the cutest sound ever.  A lumikko is actually a type of weasel, and I have come to identify with this little animal. In my imagination, they are sly and secretive, but also curious and lively, and even my mother couldn’t help but finding similarities between me ad this little creature when presented with photographic evidence. Plus, if you apply Italian grammar rules to this word (please bear with me Finnish people), lumikko in plural would be lumikki, which means Snowhite. As a fairytale fanatic, it made me appreciate the word even more.

My adventure in Finland started, as many other things in my life, in the most random way. I really love Scandinavian countries, so I was more than happy to have the chance to spend a year of my life (and maybe more, who knows?) in Tampere. The -30 degrees long winter didn’t scare me, I have survived winter in New Paltz, U.S., Urbino, Italy and Copenhagen, Denmark. A lot of people are surprised at how cold winters could be in Italy, and Urbino, where I spent 6 years of my life, was regularly covered in snow every winter. So, despite being born in warm Sicily, I was no stranger to snow. And to be fair, this year Italy suffered  the worst winter in many many years, and while I could walk in Tampere without any problems, my friends in Urbino couldn’t leave their houses due to the exceptional amount of snow.

However, on 22 February, after only one month in beautiful Finland, it was snowing again and  I had learnt the hard way not to trust fresh snow and its slippiness, so I was walking very carefully. I was going to my Finnish language exam and while approaching the bus stop (I couldn’t be bothered to walk under the snow, laziness has always been my downfall), I slipped on fresh snow, which had gently covered up a massive slippery bulk of ice. It wasn’t that bad of a fall, but apparently my leg twisted the wrong way and suddendly I was in a lot of pain. I can only be grateful there were people at the bus stop. They helped me sit on the bench, and after a few minutes of “Ok, maybe this pain will go away, it’s nothing serious aka me trying to be stoic/not wanting to ruin my stay in Finland” they called the ambulance for me. This woman in particular was so nice to stay with me while we waited for the ambulance, and another one gave me a painkiller. The ambulance came, along with paramedics who looked like Thor and were probably younger than me. When I got to the hospital I found out that I had indeed broken my tibia. I am still on crutches on this day and hopefully I will be able to ditch them completely in  a month. As one of my professors put it, at least I was having the chance to experience Finnish health care, which, trust me, is very different from Italian one.

My mother listed all the things that made my stay in a Finnish hospital much better that what my grandmother experienced during her 40 days stay in a public hospital in Sicily. The list included: being given pyjamas and slippers, eating in real plates and with real cutlery, being able to shower 3 times in a week (while my grandmother couldn’t shower at all during those 40 days), being escorted to the bathroom by nurses every time I needed to, having a physiotherapist come to me to help me with exercises and walking, being given printed copies of x-rays on demand and being able to talk to the doctor. Anyway, this isn’t a post to complain about Sicilian health system (there are some very good hospitals and doctors as well), but to point out what I seemed to detect as a very specific feature of Finnish doctors.

Let’s put it this way: all Finnish health workers I encounted seemed to be extremely optimistic, to the point that transcends “positive encouragement” and goes into “straight out lie to you”. It all started with the nurse promising me that if I got IV I would be able to get all my painkillers directly in my blood. Of course, I found out afterwards I would get painkillers as pills and IV had nothing to do with it. The best one was the surgeon, assuring me that if I had surgery I would be able to walk after 3 days. I am ashamed of myself, but I believed him. I am still happy I had surgery but there was no way I was able to walk after 3 days. At that point I was suspicious, and I didn’t take it too badly when I found out my physiotherapist instructions (walk at least every hour/do these exercises hundreds of thousands of times a day- I am not exaggerating, these were her exact words) were impossible to follow for the first weeks. So, when the dentist told Snufkin that he would be ok after wisdom tooth surgery in just 3 day I knew the deal. And I was prepared when it took over 10 days for him to fully recover. At my last  check in, when the doctor told me I could be off crutches in 2 weeks I simply smiled.

I won’t be tricked anymore. May it be their stoic attitude to life and discomfort? May it be some unwritten comma in their Hippocratic Oath? I have no idea, as a foreigner living here I can only take it as a fact. Finnish doctors surely believe in you. Or in magic.