Young family moving to Kerava

[Christian77]

Also, to make the misery of the proletariat be felt by the owning classes, the cities have been acquiring flats here and there, so you can have a "good area" with all owned flats and then one "social case" in the middle. Good luck if you score one of those, thats a "keeper". Theres also the big "landlord companies" such as VVO, SATO and the insurance companies that have rentals.

And yes, they're not all ghettoes, but people living in them make them such.

Thanx Pursuivant. We will surely keep that in mind and thanx for the info. We will try our hardest to steer clear of such places. We are house owner here so that is what our final destination will be there too... eventually.

[Christian77]

Getting all defensive about Pursuivant just shows how badly you may be prepared for the culture shock that is Finland.

Fins are not like Pursuivant

... sure he is just stating the facts.

[Christian77]

f I can learn Danish in 1½ years without schooling I am sure I could learn Finnish.

Hi Christian
I also learned Swedish in just over a year and I also have a Finnish wife, but Finnish is not sticking as easily! Could be that I am getting to be an old dog and Finnish is a new trick, but it is more difficult as it has virtually no links with English and also Finns are not used to hearing words mispronounced so look blank when you say something slightly wrong!

Good luck as self employed - I personally find that any work skilled or unskilled is very expensive here so despite the apparent influx of Estonian labour, there may be opportnities if you are offering your services directly to customers - perhaps your wife can also help with the customer service as she can answer quotes etc and check whether the customer is confident in English (I'd expect many are)

Hi Liam1. Thanx... I speak quite a bit of Swedish as I have been working for a swede for the past few months. Also Danish and Swedish ain't so far from each other. I will deff pick it up a lot faster than Finnish. I will be having my business on the side. Not focusing too much on it as I do realise that the first 2 years will be dedicated to learning Finnish and also getting up to date with Finnish building regulations. I am looking to further my education anyway so uni or technikon is another alternative whilst doing language courses. I have a vast family, spread around the country and have built a network via them and the net. We still have 5 months before we move so all the info received is valued, be it negative or not. It helps to understand the ppl more.

[Christian77]

Getting all defensive about Pursuivant just shows how badly you may be prepared for the culture shock that is Finland.

Fins are not like Pursuivant

They don't express themselves like he does, but they do think alike.

Thanx man... have experienced it first hand... However I have also experienced really cool people from there that are very welcoming.

[Christian77]

We will be moving to Kerava as there is a big international community there

I must have missed that...

(although they do have FInland's international cricket ground)

I suppose then it is a lucky thing that I have played cricket most of my life.

2. Move where the job is.

where the in-laws are?

Family spread over a vast area. Quite many in greater Helsinki.

[Mook]

There's always Sipoo too, which is mainly Swedish speaking. (but has crap public transport).

Nikila is about 15 minutes from Kerava.