What I’ll miss about Finland ...

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(An edited version of this post was published in the Helsinki Times on July 7, 2011).

 

I’ve now less than two weeks left as a resident of Finland and I am starting to take my leave from people and places that have become so familiar over the last four years.

Of course, I am very excited at the prospect of moving back home and being with my family. But I know that there are lots of things I will miss from this country where I have now lived for around a twelfth of my life.

• Top of the list - people. My friends and colleagues, many now are both. Folk from the Helsinki Social club and the Finn-Brit Players. I’ve added more than 150 Facebook friends since I moved here and I hope that many of them will stay in touch after I leave.
• Next, Helsinki. I’m not a natural city dweller, but this is the easiest city I can imagine to live in. Extremely cosmopolitan, small enough to feel homely, large enough to have a wide variety of choices of things to do. A largely undiscovered gem, I recommend everybody visit for a long weekend. Though maybe not between November and April unless you really like snow, ice and cold! But right now, it is spectacular. For much of last summer, it was warmer than home.
• Stuff that works. That means pretty much everything here. Public transport, whether buses, trains, metro, ferries runs pretty much on time regardless of the weather. We had more snow last winter than any while I’ve lived here, but I saw no real disruption. I can send an SMS to order a taxi and it will normally be waiting outside my door by the time I have walked downstairs. And the machinery of the state is well oiled and works well, as long as you follow the correct process.
• Food – I don’t mean just the great meals we’ve had in more than 50 restaurants, my reviews are still open on www.eat.fi. But some of the other treats – Fazer chocolate, great rye breads, salmiakki and salmiakki kossu, fabulous fresh strawberries, cherries and peas from street stalls in the summer, pea soup on Thursdays; I could go on, but it’s making me hungry just to write about them. Oh, and don’t forget mämmi at Easter, I think I am one of the few foreigners that likes it.
• The nature – there is so much of it here, it seems, even in the city. From the majestic silver birch, the national tree, to feeding red squirrels at Seurasaari or picking wild mushrooms, I have enjoyed, as most Finns do, the chance to be “in the nature.”
• Vantaa airport – which now ranks as my favourite to fly from. Easy to get in and out of and only 30 minutes from home once we’re wheels down. And the amazing experience of landing half an hour before midnight in summer still in total daylight.

I am sure that over the coming months, more will occur to me, but this seems to be a good start. But are there things I won’t miss? Two come to mind.

The first has been spending so much time away from my family. Of course, we’ve had some great times together in Helsinki. But having to say goodbye to them on a Sunday night to fly back to Helsinki has been the hardest thing to do. I’ve missed being there for four years of my daughters’ lives. 

My youngest is now an adult and leaves home in September for university. I’ve joked that we have had more conversations on Facebook than we would have done if we had been living together, but I don’t really think either of us believes it. And my eldest will be married in the same month; though she left home around the same time that I did, I have missed her just as much. I’ve not seen my parents and sister as much as if I had I been living in the UK.

But the hardest has been being apart from my wife. She has been at the heart of my life for almost half of it and we’ll celebrate 21 years of marriage in September. And now we have to learn how to live together again, for the first time as a couple with no kids at home!

And the second thing I won’t miss? The cost of booze. I no longer flinch at being asked to pay more than 6€ for less than a pint of beer. I consider a bottle of wine that costs less than 30€ in a restaurant to be good value. I shall enjoy getting back to going to wine tastings with the Naked Grape and getting change from a fiver for a pint.

I am developing strategies to cope with the things I will miss from Finland. I will reconnect with my old friends in the UK and keep in touch with everyone else through Facebook.  I will visit Helsinki when I can, at least for Vappu. I will try to be patient with the services back home, even though they won’t work quite as well, and reflect that it is, in part, because I am paying less in tax for them. I will import what Finnish delicacies I can. I have two silver birches in my garden and, as we live in the beautiful Hampshire countryside, I will get out into it more often. And I will revisit this blog, to remind me of all of the wonderful new experiences I have had.

So, I continue to prepare to say farewell to Finland on June 17. Because I really don’t think it is goodbye.