Hey everyone,
i'm seriously considering moving to Kokkola with my gf in April to study at the local amk and i'm wondering if anyone on this forum is living or has lived there before. would you mind sharing your impressions and experiences of the town? any information or advice about living in kokkola would be much appreciated.
kokkola
Re: kokkola
I have to visit Kokkola for work every couple of months.simakun wrote:Hey everyone,
i'm seriously considering moving to Kokkola with my gf in April to study at the local amk and i'm wondering if anyone on this forum is living or has lived there before. would you mind sharing your impressions and experiences of the town? any information or advice about living in kokkola would be much appreciated.
Every time I think how small and out in the sticks Pori is, I just remember I could be living in Kokkola... and somehow everything seems OK.
I suppose this does not really help the image of Kokkola...but it is typical Finnish humour/story and it is true..
One of my pub aquaintances is married to Kokkola girl, they have a small son.
His mother in law, seems to require frequent visits from her daughter and grandson. (Son in law is tolerated).
The fact that it is a "long way and expensive to travel to/from" Vantaa is not problem..Mother in law buys the tickets.
But my friend insisted on the following; that the ticket to Kokkola was by train and the ticket home/from Kokkola was by air.
I asked Miksi?
His response..."takes longer to get there, and quicker to get away from there!"
One of my pub aquaintances is married to Kokkola girl, they have a small son.
His mother in law, seems to require frequent visits from her daughter and grandson. (Son in law is tolerated).
The fact that it is a "long way and expensive to travel to/from" Vantaa is not problem..Mother in law buys the tickets.
But my friend insisted on the following; that the ticket to Kokkola was by train and the ticket home/from Kokkola was by air.
I asked Miksi?
His response..."takes longer to get there, and quicker to get away from there!"
People do not become more irritable as they grow old - they simply stop making the effort to avoid annoying others.
Okey, the lass is here now and i will now tell you something about kokkola. I left there 8 years ago and never regretted it. It's small and there's nothing to do really. U cant see many people walking in the 'city' after four in the afternoon and the pubs are full of alcoholics. Okey there's couple of nice pubs in the centre but there's no people during the week... and as all little towns even i get to hear complaints of my clothing and dialect and big city attitude - i refuse to think i have somekind of a attitude (ok, i dont go to bars or the centre in jogging clothes etc...). It's quite nice and beautiful city in summertime but in wintertime....? And one minus point is that its so far from everything - if u want to travel somewhere further than Kälviä or Oulu or Vaasa it takes a long time... If you really want to move there i hope you have lots of friends already to hang a round with. Otherwise you might have really boring time there. It's also really hard to find a job there. And probably they require that you speak swedish also.
BUT there is the best mexican restaurant in Finland!!! =) only my opinion but i know i am right... LOL
ps when the hell are they gona make episode 13 of Little Ninjai????
BUT there is the best mexican restaurant in Finland!!! =) only my opinion but i know i am right... LOL
ps when the hell are they gona make episode 13 of Little Ninjai????
If its muddy, Can I drive it?
sinikettu wrote:I suppose this does not really help the image of Kokkola...but it is typical Finnish humour/story and it is true..
One of my pub aquaintances is married to Kokkola girl, they have a small son.
His mother in law, seems to require frequent visits from her daughter and grandson. (Son in law is tolerated).
The fact that it is a "long way and expensive to travel to/from" Vantaa is not problem..Mother in law buys the tickets.
But my friend insisted on the following; that the ticket to Kokkola was by train and the ticket home/from Kokkola was by air.
I asked Miksi?
His response..."takes longer to get there, and quicker to get away from there!"
Clever.I read in the Michelin green guide for Finland that Kokkola has the last Royal Naval vessel to be captured in battle, (during the Crimean war - when Finland was a Grand Duchy of Russia).
So I thought... gotta see this.
It's a rowing boat.
the word anticlimax didn't quite cover it.Juha H. wrote:excellent shopping malls.
Where on earth are they? Have been to Kokkola sometimes and all I could find were Anttila, Citymarket and that sort of things (amended with some other big chains present almost everywhere like H&M, Seppälä, Lindex, KappAhl, Dressmann etc.)But to be honest I did not find it any better or worse than any other similar-sized town in Finland.
See e.g.
http://www.kokkola.fi/indexuk.htm
http://tourism.kokkola.fi/index_uk.asp?page_id=543
hi everyone,
thanks so much for the replies. i enjoyed reading all of them. k3 doesn't sound like too bad a place for someone like me. i never goto pubs, i'll probably be on a fixed income and i tend to hit the sack early anyways. good to know they have the same basic stores as in helsinki. i just hope i don't get stared at too much. coincidentally, i'm hoping to attend swedish lang classes while up there. figured it's easier to learn than finnish.
thanks so much for the replies. i enjoyed reading all of them. k3 doesn't sound like too bad a place for someone like me. i never goto pubs, i'll probably be on a fixed income and i tend to hit the sack early anyways. good to know they have the same basic stores as in helsinki. i just hope i don't get stared at too much. coincidentally, i'm hoping to attend swedish lang classes while up there. figured it's easier to learn than finnish.
If you reason don't you know your own preoccupation is where you'll go - Gotta Get Away by The Offspring
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Mexicolainen
- Posts: 1
- Joined: Sat Jan 13, 2007 8:57 am
Kokkola
Well I was exchange in Kokkola last year I spend there whole year and it was great, i was in the AMK and now is even better cause they join the departments so there is more students, is a small city but the student life is great, cuz all students are kind of close , i have some friends still there, I am now looking forward to go back Finland, but of course the city is pretty small but it has a nice seaside, of course my finnish friends were little bit less than the other exchange but still u may try if u have questions i could help u, no problem, but give a chance to the small city i am from Mexico city and i can say is worth to...
C YAA
Laura
C YAA
Laura
Re: kokkola
Heya! I don't know if you're still checking into this thread, but i moved to Kokkola about a year ago. I've been coming here about once a year for ten years and i've always liked the town.simakun wrote:Hey everyone,
i'm seriously considering moving to Kokkola with my gf in April to study at the local amk and i'm wondering if anyone on this forum is living or has lived there before. would you mind sharing your impressions and experiences of the town? any information or advice about living in kokkola would be much appreciated.
Yes there are shopping malls here now, the Chydenia center is an ambitious build and opened just a few weeks ago. I can usually find everything i look for in Kokkola, even though i'm quite into technology like hi fi and synthesizers etc.
There's plenty of pubs if that's something you want, there's actually quite a few "clubs" as well, and they seem to be open till about 4 am most days. Maybe not the trendiest in the world, but that's always going to be relative. If you come from Los Angeles to Helsinki you probably won't find that very trendy either.
I agree there's great mexican food here! There's also the usual burger chains (except BK for some reason). I don't think there's any indian food, but i think there's a couple of chinese resturants. Again it's relative; if you come from China you're not going to find one asian resturant in all of europe that tastes one bit chinese. I had a friend from singapore who went all over europe a few years ago and she was very frustrated with the "chinese resturants". "This is not asian food!!!" she complained.
Bottom line is i wouldn't have moved here if i didn't like it here. But if you want a really trendy lifestyle with lots of things happening all around all the time, move to New York or Paris or Tokyo. Kokkola is a very nice town, in my point of view. And it's quiter than bigger towns, i like that.
Last edited by JonasE on Mon Jan 22, 2007 8:47 pm, edited 3 times in total.