Share your experiences~!

[onkko]

That makes Finland a good match for you - you don't need a car here.

Yes you do, in main areas like Helsinki or Tampere you MAY not need a car but in area where i live you do.
For example if i want to go from my childhood home to "city" its possible once a day, thats schooldays. You get back once a day, schooldays. Other possibility is to walk 1 to 3 km instead of 200m and you get one or two different times.
So if you want to go to city 8am and come back 3pm then ok...

Also we can look tampere, there is extensive public transport. Travelling 10km "wrong way" took 1.5 hours, sure you dont need a car if you dont care about your time....

[CH]

If you want to play house, do it in a condo where you can call on the care-taker to look after things.

Yea, definitely this... or just start out in student housing, and get to know the area before putting your money into a house. With student housing you can also more easily get to know people (in theory at least). Once you have a feel of things, and get your expectations set to a more Finnish level, you can start scouting for an actual house (for instance, even a small house in the US is huge here... halve, or better yet, quarter what you had in mind, and you get more closer to realistic house/apartment sizes here in Finland).

[riku2]

Anybody else doubt the wisdom of jumping into homeownership in a highly regulated country where you don't speak the language? Sometimes it's hard enough just renting.

I bought a house three weeks after moving to finland. That was not as a student thought. And it was a detached house - no dealing with housing companies or countless rules (written only in finnish) about when you can hang your blankets on the balcony, demarcation about who maintains the front door and who the internal doors etc. Have had no problems in the past 14 years and certainly better than renting.
If I change the TV socket then i'm the one in charge, not worrying that there are different kinds and by changing the socket in my lounge I might cut off the tv signal to all others in the block (who thought up that stupid system).

I don't see much different in the home ownership/rental discussion that different between finland and other countries. Perhaps it's more common to have condo style associations (housing companies) in finland (unknown really in the UK). As a detached home owner I would never want to be under than condo/housing company style regime.

[AnnabelleIeve]

Yeah, yeah...

[AnnabelleIeve]

Oh, today is an exciting day~!
It's my first day of school at a new college~ ~!!!

It's 4:00 where I am though~
Yes, I do wake up early~~~


I love being a student

I had the weirdest dream that a Finn got eaten by a polar bear because he kept taking smoke breaks as he was running away

[Adrian42]

I had the weirdest dream that a Finn got eaten by a polar bear because he kept taking smoke breaks as he was running away

There are no polar bears in Finland.

[AnnabelleIeve]

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[Upphew]

Just for the record: I'm not trying to keep you moving to or paint a terrifying picture of Finland. What I try to do is show the other side of the coin: snow is nice and looks pretty, but it gets old quite fast when you have to wake earlier to push it aside. And when you get back home you have the same show ahead of you. House is nice as it is your house and you can do whatever you like, but not so nice as you pretty much have to do everything by yourself. No cheap Mexicans to do the chores.

[AnnabelleIeve]

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[AnnabelleIeve]

Did you guys know that they changed the green skittles to apple flavor instead of lime?

[AldenG]

Yes.

Did you know that Soylent Green is people?

[jahasjahas]

My soundtrack for this thread:



(Google Translate can't figure out the lyrics at all, so you'll need to learn Finnish first.)

[Jessa]

Yes.

Did you know that Soylent Green is people?

Ahaha... classic.

[Pursuivant]

My family has never hired servants.

Unfortunately we haven't gotten any slaves up north so you need to pay them actually.

[AnnabelleIeve]

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