surveillance

[Rob A.]

Also be sure to avoid USA

For a $2 purchase in WalMart they wanted to see my passport.

You must have said something subversive like "Good morning" with an accent....and now you were suspected of being an Al Quaeda operative....perhaps a suicide bomber intent on blowing up their junk food aisle... Doesn't matter if you are a blue-eyed blond or a 92-year old woman..... Terrorists are everywhere...

Unfortunately common sense is in rather short supply in the good ol' USA these days....

[Curious1]

So the Finland situation is nowhere near as bad as the US or UK situations?

For reasons hard to explain, nosy grannies do not worry me so much

Though that would be a problem if they were not just being nosey actually able to interfere in how I live... if they can use regulations against me for example - I do not want to be living at the whim of resident committees as to what time I'm awake or what state my home is in. I'm very free-spirited and don't take kindly to micro-regulation.

[raamv]

Depending on where you want to live ( which also means earn), you can be pretty isolated from anything...here and wont be disturbed..
But then your biggest issue would be to find a job... Unless you are already wealthy...

[riku2]

If you have never been to finland before then you might get a shock as to just how little security there is. It's quite common for offices not to have any kind of out of hours guard on duty. If you work there, then just turn up with your access card and go in. Even large warehouses in the suburbs can be like this (eg you need to get some part from stores to send off by fedex).
And unattended bags don't seem to attract any attention in finland, even suitcases left around at the airport (eg on the way from the airport to the hilton airport hotel) don't cause undue panic.

[Karhunkoski]

if they can use regulations against me for example - I do not want to be living at the whim of resident committees as to what time I'm awake or what state my home is in. I'm very free-spirited and don't take kindly to micro-regulation.

I think we can conclude that Finland isn't really for you. Why not try somewhere else.

[rinso]

For reasons hard to explain, nosy grannies do not worry me so much

Though that would be a problem if they were not just being nosey actually able to interfere in how I live... if they can use regulations against me for example

When you behave "unfinnish", they will react. Not directly to you, but by influencing your surroundings. If you don't fit in, you can become totally isolated. And the smaller the place, the quicker it happens. And in small places you often need your neighbours

[Pursuivant]

if they can use regulations against me for example - I do not want to be living at the whim of resident committees as to what time I'm awake or what state my home is in.

As long as you observe the 22-07 quiet time and recycle your trash, don't dust the carpets on Sundays and don't make curried eel I'd suppose even the grannies wouldn't mind... it is known for people to "mind their own business" so much there was a bloke mummifed in his flat for 8 years, the only objection the neighbours had it had smelled funky one year, but otherwise a nice proper and quiet neighbor.

[Curious1]

I've never been before (hence the questions which seem absurd one way or the other) and certainly hope to be pleasantly surprised

So my impression is... a lot of the stuff I think is scary, is either not going on, is not as bad as other places, or is not as scary as it might sound.

But we have mixed votes on exactly how bad the "neighbour problem" might be (which suggests it might depend who the neighbours are, and I need to be careful where I choose to live if I move).

Thanks a lot for the help so far

[Pursuivant]

Well if you come in as a student - you will live in a student dorm - so its an animal house.

[Rip]

1) In order to buy a travel pass (eg in Helsinki, Espoo, Vantaa) you need to be resident in the capital region. So you need to show your ID number when you initially buy the card. So every time you take a bus, tram, local train, metro or the Suomenlinna ferry they know where you are going.... Of course you can travel without a travel card, by paying cash to the driver or buying a single ticket from the machine every time you travel- but then you won't get student discount or any other kind of price reduction.

If you buy the non-personal card, 'they' would not know who is travelling, but that would be about twice the price of the regular (non-student) resident's card.

By the, way people here don't seem to have noticed that many of the local have security cameras - and the number is likely going to increase in the future: http://yle.fi/alueet/helsinki/helsinki/ ... origin=rss

(the cameras are fairly well hidden near the front roof line, although they are accompanied by a note saying that the camera is there)

[Rip]

Well if you come in as a student - you will live in a student dorm - so its an animal house.

if you live elswhere, then the most likely reason for complaints - noise - will depend in addition to your actions on who you happen to get on your neighbours and how good or bad is the soundproofing in the building.

[sammy]

Well if you come in as a student - you will live in a student dorm - so its an animal house.

if you live elswhere, then the most likely reason for complaints - noise - will depend in addition to your actions on who you happen to get on your neighbours and how good or bad is the soundproofing in the building.

I'm not sure if the tradition is still alive nowadays, but back in my student days it was sort of common courtesy to warn about possible noise in advance, if there was a party coming on for example... it was fairly common to see notes on the house noticeboard saying "party next Monday - we're sorry for the disturbance we might cause". Of course not all did this, but IMO it was a nice gesture, since occasional party noise should be considered as "normal"... however if it happens every sodding weekend (or every night, as might be with some folks) then it's a different matter, whether it's a student dormitory or a regular flat.

Mind you... on the night of the party some allegedly put up a second note saying "party today - we're causing the disturbance we were sorry for earlier"...

[Curious1]

Strange how when people start looking, they start finding more cameras than they'd expected I have read Tampere has them in schools as well, not that I'm likely to be anywhere near schools. I wonder if the extent of CCTV-creep depends on the place, which is why I asked about city size (Helsinki and Tampere two of the top three). I've watched CCTV-creep in other places and it always seems greater the bigger the city - though if it's inversely proportional to the curtain-twitching grannies, it raises questions of where the right kind of size is between the two extremes.

I think people might have understood "smaller towns" in a different sense than i meant though, rural places have a bad rep for tolerance pretty much everywhere, I was thinking more of the 100,000-ish places vs the big three or four.

Another quick question, do any of the towns (big or small) have bohemian/alternative districts, or mainly-migrant districts, or districts made up mainly of students?

[Pursuivant]

The funniest CCTV cameras in Helsinki are on Aleksanterinkatu, watching the presidential palaces rear block, they've made them into huge birds as the districts "ancient"...

As for old towns, theres the porcellain cats on the window, looking in or out so you know if the sailor is at home... nevermind "gossip mirrors"...

I can tell you one thing of CCTV cameras, I used to work security back in the good old days. There was me in uniform looking ugly, and two blinking cameras. Then there was an old lady doing her shopping in the corner isle deciding on catlitter.... come in the youth, go in the corner with the old lady to stuff the stuff into their sleeve... she was a store detective, I was a "scarethief" and the cams were plastic with a blinking battery light - as if we could afford someone look at cameras

BTW curious, mind me asking where you from - mileage varies, and we're pretty good with whacking you with "everybody knows this" stuff that'll make your knickers vanish...

[Curious1]

but who was watching the gossip mirror while the old lady was out working at the store

Ohh... I'm from England. Where we seem seriously short on quaintness, and high on cameras etc.