Saturday 16 April 2011

It's the little things that count

Obviously I've mentioned how foreign and different this country is to me, but I don't think I've written about the tiny details, that maybe you wouldn't expect, that are different. There are lots of simple things that I sometimes realise are not at all like home.
For example, the air is clearer in Finland. Maybe I'm just used to breathing in the dodgy London air, which is probably not very healthy, but it feels a lot cleaner and clearer here. The first time I came to this country we noticed it straight away, and we loved it.
Food is saltier here. I don't know why that is, presumably it just suits the tastes of Finnish people better, but it's definitely noticeable for me. English food seems a bit bland in comparison. I'll probably add a ton of salt to everything when I leave because I've got used to how Finnish food tastes.
On Friday and Saturday nights people go out later than they usually would in England. I see "going out time" as between 8 and 9pm, but often in Finland we've been at home until 10.30-11pm. Bars are open until 2am here, so maybe there's just less of a rush to get out earlier. I'd never wait until that time if I was just going to a bar in England.
The light levels are strange. In winter it's dark almost constantly, but at this time of year it's light for so long, much longer than in England. I certainly prefer it as it is now. I'm not even in Northern Finland, where the light levels are much more extreme than this. It's been such a nice change recently to have light for much longer.
Just about everyone lives in blocks of flats here. Hardly anyone lives in a proper house with more than one level. I don't know why, and in England families wouldn't usually live in a flat. The building I live in now is old and beautiful, but the last place I lived in looked like a council towerblock. I'd be embarrassed to live somewhere like that in England, but here it's completely acceptable, and normal.
The whole thing in the supermarket with weighing your vegetables and getting a sticker for them - we don't do that in England. The first time I did that by myself I felt quietly very proud. In England you just take it to the till and they weigh it there. It's such a strange little thing.
The obsession with taking a numbered ticket when you're waiting somewere. Why not just form a queue like we would in England? Very occasionally we have ticket machines, but here they are absolutely everywhere - the supermarket, the bank, the bus station, the police station...just everywhere.
All these little things add up to make things so different. Things like language, weather, and food are obvious, but I've noticed all these tiny aspects that perhaps you'd never expect to differ. Somehow I think I like the strange feeling.

4 comments:

  1. Hey, I stumbled on your blog and felt like I needed to comment on this :) The block of flats thing is probably because of recent history and structural change. I’d never really thought about this difference between England and Finland, but it’s an interesting observation! After the war all the displaced farmers needed to be resettled and with government help and support by early 1960s we were farming more land than ever while at the same time experiencing rapid industrialization. The overproduction of agriculture became a problem and fields were “wrapped” in hopes of solving this problem. There were no jobs for all the now adult baby boomers and a massive flow to the cities (and Sweden) started and there was urgent need for lots and lots of houses. Obviously a block of flats was the cheapest and most efficient way to go.

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  2. Hey, thank you for that, seems like a reasonable explanation. I've lived in Turku city centre this whole time, and have noticed how much housing there is. In most English cities the upper floors of buildings in the centre would usually be occupied by office space or additional small business premises, a minority of buildings would have flats on top. Most of the houses I've lived in in the past couple of years have been on top of shops in the suburbs of London, but I think that's been a coincidence. Here just about every shop, restaurant etc seems to have several floors of housing. Right now I live on top of an art gallery. They really haven't let any space go to waste.

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  3. Hi, how's the job hunting going? Just wanted to let you know that if you are interested there is a party on Sunday at The Monkey and several of Finland's best DJ's are playing there - it's called Millenium Spring :) it's a tad expensive at 10eur entrance but it should be good...

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  4. You should visit a smaller town in Finland. I live on the west coast, north from Turku, in very small town (the area is big, people few). Almost everyone who can afford it lives in their own "proper" house. Mostly students, young adults and single parents who live in blocks.

    The ticket thing, I think we want to know how much something costs before we take it to the register, because it'd be embarrasing to tell the cashier I'm not taking this with me... That and it's assumed faster we weight things ourself than making the cashier do it for everyone.

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