Life in Finland - First impressions (part 1)

 Now that I’ve been in Finland for one week, I can share some thoughts or what can be called as “my first impressions” of the country and daily life here. It will be interesting to compare these thoughts in the end of my stay here after six months and see how they develop.

The cold

First thing that comes to my mind is still the cold. Coming here during winter was something that scared me a little back in Brazil. I tried to be prepared, bought some winter clothes and accessories, but I knew I would have to come here first to understand what the winter was really like here. For many people this might be trivial thing, but being born and raised in Brazil, I think I had some reasons to be concerned about that cold. When I left Brazil, the weather there was something like +30°C (86°F)! What I can say about the cold is that is not as bad as I expected. It’s bearable with the right clothes on. Last Friday and Saturday, the temperature reached -20°C (-4°F) and although it was a bit harder to breath and I felt my face skin burning a little from the cold…. nah…. it wasn’t that bad. Not much worse than the –10°C (14°F) when I arrived. My conclusion is that I am more lazy than usual here, because for me it is a big effort to put all those layers of clothes before going out for any place, and the snowy view from my window doesn’t encourage me to go outside. But I’m ok with that. It’s easy to get prepared for the cold. (The darkness, on the other hand, still bothers me a little. But I heard people saying the worst part is gone and now it’s going to be better and better)

The system works 

Some things here make me feel like I have moved from a 3^rd world country to a 1^st world one. Nowadays these classifications are not real anymore. But still, Brazil has a lot to develop in many aspects like education, health care systems, transportations, etc. The point here is not criticizing my home country. I still love Brazil. It’s just that I see many positive things here that wouldn’t work in Brazil. For example, winter here is a high maintenance period. Snow removal activities are a serious business. And it is done in an incredibly efficient way. One can say that Finns cope with these things every year, so it’s easy for them to be experts in that. But in Brazil also, we have floods every summer, and every year the chaos is the same. I don’t know what we are doing wrong (or not doing at all). Another thing that it’s interesting here is related to transportation. I bought the single tickets to go to Helsinki by train on Friday and it’s a bit expensive (€4,50) but no one checks if you have that ticket. I mean, sometimes there are some inspectors checking that, but not always. Well, if we had that in Brazil, most people would ride for free.

It’s expensive

They say life in Europe is expensive. Well, I can’t disagree. In general, things here are more expensive than they are in Brazil. In some cases, MUCH more expensive. Last week I bought a router for €70. In Brazil I could have had that for R$60. Considering that one Euro is now 2,70 Reais… that can be seen as expensive. And yesterday, I went to the movies and the regular ticket was €12,50… However, I got a prepaid phone here that allows me to make phone calls to Brazil at €0,20/minute. If I could talk less to my family, that would be a good deal. But since I cannot spend less than 30 minutes with them, the best solution for me is to get a good internet connection, which I couldn’t do so far. I’ll pay more attention to prices to see what could be considered cheap here. But so far, either things are more expensive or same price range.