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 3rd world country to a 1st 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.
