finnland / helsinki

After spending nearly four months in Finnland, most of the time in Helsinki, I just have to tell you about the Finns, the Finnish culture, about the things that are “special” here. The things that are important. The things you better know before coming here.

- Santa Claus is called “joulupukki”. No, they actually take this seriously, it just sounds ridiculous.

- Sauna is a very basic thing in Finnish life. Everybody knows this, of course, I don’t have to tell you. But here is a nice quotation of an email about Finnish Christmas culture which was sent around in the foreign-students list – it actually shows, how *very* important sauna is:
“After the porridge and declaration of the Christmas peace people go to the graves, leaving candles for the dead relatives. Then follow often Christmas sauna and church.”
Christmas sauna?…

- It does not matter if you exchange money in the bank or buy something in the supermarket: You will never pay *.49 or *.99, neither will you pay *.21 or *.81, the money is always rounded (which, I hope, is the correct term). I felt kind of ripped off the first time I bought something for 2.98 and actually had to pay 3 Euros.

- The central post office is opened from 7am until 9pm, also on Saturdays. People working in a Finnish post office actually deserve the name “worker”, in obvious contrast to Germans.

- Due to some weird law there is only a very limited amount of cabs in the city, which means: On the weekend, starting at about 1-2am, there are huge queues (sometimes a lot more than hundred people) at the places where cabs depart, and you easily wait half an hour to get a cab. But Finns seem to be used to it, and don’t complain.

- Parties have strange names, such as “eternal erection”.

- Alcohol is expensive (not that expensive, in Norway you pay way more for a beer), but on student parties ridiculously cheap (you get a beer for one euro). And if you are out of money, just take the ferry to Tallin (and back), you can import 100 litres of beer from Estonia to Finnland.

- It is extremely difficult to be at the central station at 3am and find somebody who is actually still able to stand, walk or even talk.

- You can buy alcohol at many, many places, like in other countries. Gas stations, supermarkets, kiosks – whatever. But beware! When the clock reaches the magical time of 9pm, no alcohol is sold anymore. It is not like you just cannot take it anymore, or they put it behind bars, no: The person selling the booze is just looking extremely disturbed when you come to the counter with a few sixpacks, and makes strange noises, and moves the head in an totally inappropriate way. Took us a while to find out this “rule”.

- It does not matter how the weather looks like, snowstorm, blizzard, thunder and the heaviest rain: Finns are jogging. Always. Everywhere.

- At the beginning of my Finnish supermarket career, I tried to act the same way as in a German supermarket: You start with a friendly “hello” and nodd, smiling a bit, then you pay, and after putting everything into your plastic bag, you say something like “goodbye”. Doing this in Finnland will lead to strange, not-understanding faces: people are just not used to saying “hi” and “bye”. And if the person sitting behind the counter is female, being nice to her will result in her thinking things that are not necessarily true (could be, though, of course).

- If a Finn says “moi”, or even “moi moi”, stay calm, don’t freak out. He or she is actually trying to be nice, and not making fun of you. “moi moi” means some like “goodbye”. Important: The more “moi”s, the more affectionate the meaning ^^ …

I would be glad if you guys could add something here :)