The other side of the Finnish postcard

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Julien Founder

Member since 11 March 2005

17 years of happy life abroad

JulienFounder21 February 2014 11:16:51

52733

Hi,

As a tourist in a foreign country, very often, we are enchanted with what we discover.

Living abroad is different. It's a rich experience but there are also some difficulties to face.

When people ask me for advice on living abroad, I then tend to say that one should also look at both sides of the postcard.

As an expat in Finland, how would you describe the two sides of your Finnish postcard?

Thank you for sharing your experience,

Julien

tonyfitz New member

Member since 26 November 2012

tonyfitzNew member24 February 2014 10:01:47

Hi Julien,

we recently spent 4 months living in Helsinki, and actually find it difficult to provide any downsides to living there, in fact we enjoyed it so much that it is one of the top 2 countries we want to live in once we have finished our current assignment in Japan.

If there was to be anything that was vaguely annoying, it was the Finnish closedown on the numerous public holidays where you were pretty much unable to buy anything except from a few convenience stores and also the general 6:00pm close of day. We have become accustomed to cities being full on all the time, so finding a city that still shut up for the night and on public holidays was a bit strange, but was something we got used to and managed to live with.

We found everything about Finland really great, the people were friendly and knew how to enjoy themselves and everything was easy to find.

I think from conversations with other people while there, that there may be some underlying societal issues brewing, but we never experienced any of those.

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