katrina wrote:Whoo!:) It came in the mail yesterday:)lol I have an A-5 visa!:) Whoo!:) I am so happy it came:) All that is left is that my hubby is flying to America to come get me, and then we fly back:) Neat!:)
When I go to Finland, what papers do I have to file? I know that I have to go to KELA. Do I go get a foreign person i.d. card from the local police in our area? Do I register something at the Maistriatti (spelling)? I was just wondering what you do once you get to Finland:) Any help would be greatly appreciated:)
Thanks!:) and thanks for answering all my old questions and stuff:)
:)Katrina
I married a Finn, too, and moved here in January so welcome to Finland :) Things you'll need to do in the order I list them are:
1. Go to the Maistratti at the corner of Albertinkatu and Bulevardi and get your henkilönumero. There is a short form you will need to fill out and they will mail you a paper with your "person number" on it with a stamp that you will need to take with you to all of the following offices. It will take a few days but I have heard some people can request it at the time of filling out the form but the paper with the seal is worth the wait.
2. You will need to go to a police station that issues the Henkilökortti, a.k.a the id card.
http://www.poliisi.fi/poliisi/home.nsf/ ... 29002BA66C tells you what you need to bring along with your papers with your henkilönumero from the Maistratti. The station in Helsinki is on Punanotkonkatu. Go early as lines are long and they keep the form behind the counter so do not bother with the long form titled "oleskelulupahakemus" or "viisumihakemus" in the waiting room as those are for visa applications or renewals which you will not need until next year since the A5 is a 1 year renewable visa. Take cash and get the electronic one since I think they are phasing out the old non-electronic cards. Opt for getting the card in the post as I made the mistake of picking it up in person and, again, the lines are looong. It takes about 3 weeks to get it in the mail.
3. From there, you can go to the KELA office. The office downtown is on Salomonkatu right next to the Tennispalatsi. You can get the form online here,
http://193.209.217.5/in/internet/suomi. ... 01095216EH , form Y77. Take your passport as they will require 2 copies of your passport and they will make the copies themselves. This card comes in the post in about a week.
4. And, a short distance, if you are in downtown doing all of this, you can go to the main train station and go down into the metro train area and get yourself a "matkakortti", the travel card [
http://www.ytv.fi/matkakortti/english/index.html ] , which will give you a bit of a price break on public transport. You can also ask for an "aikataulut", a schedule, upstairs in the regular train station. They have separate ones for Helsinki and Espoo, and they also have them online[
http://www.hel.fi/hkl/index_e.html ] and even a pretty useful journey planner[
http://pathfinder3.meridian.fi/ytv/eng/ ]
and optionally....
5. Sign up for a Finnish for Foreigners course if you don't know any Finnish yet. Many people do speak English but it's no fun being the only person at a dinner party of Finns either staring at the wall or making everyone else speak English just because of you. I still go through this myself but it's getting better as I know enough Finnish to be dangerous even if I can't really speak it very well yet. :) The Fall term starts the week of 15 September so you'll have time to enroll if the classes aren't filled -
http://www.helsinki.fi/kksc/language.se ... tus_2.html. There are also a number of other classes that you can read about in the languages forum here.
