My Finland Experience

By: lovedynasty

A young friend of mine recommended me Welcome to New Nepal while I was chatting with him. When I heard the name of the site, the first thing that struck to my mind was that it should be a humorous portal making fun of my motherland back home. I reluctantly logged into the website as I no more find the incidents taking place in Nepal as funny instead it pings the innermost part of my heart. When I started reading the posts, I found this website is the only good thing that has ever happened in New Nepal. There may be plenty but hardly anything positive comes to my mind regarding new Nepal.

As many of the Nepalese living abroad have expressed their feeling, I couldn’t help sharing my feeling as well. I have been living in Helsinki, Finland since September 2008 as a student in International Masters Degree programme. Finland is situated in Northernmost Europe and borders with Sweden, Russia and Norway. Finland being a Nordic country leads the world in many sectors including but not limited to social welfare, information technology, human rights. Finnish are generally known to be quite and love to keep low profile. Well only a few people know that Finland is the land of Nokia, the largest cell phone manufacturer in the world; the land of Santa Claus, and the land of Mika Häkkinen and Kimi Räikkönen, the winner of F1 drivers and many others. Who would know them, after all they neither bomb Iraq nor need pants without pockets for their staffs to stop corruption.

According to my personal opinion Finns are well educated, well informed and knowledgeable. When I say I am Nepali, unlike many of their European counterparts, they never confuse me as an Italian from Napoli (or Naples). Education has very deep roots in Finnish society. Almost everyone seems to have a Masters Degree. After all who wouldn’t study when you receive so many facilities as a student and in fact you are fed, housed and paid to be a student. When will Nepal reach in this state, it’s unimaginable. Well, it seems that one of the Finns was very annoyed when a Nepali posted a view in a forum saying that people in the world especially Nepal have no or limited knowledge about Finland. A typical Finn reply was “Well, yes, see now we’re limited in the resources. We don’t have a mad prince killing the king, no Maoist rebels, no mountains people come to visit, and nobody offers a goat to get the airplane fixed, so what do the people in Nepal know about Finland? The multitude of Finnish restaurants in Kathmandu?”. Let me remind you there are lots of Nepalese restaurants in Helsinki. I am not sure but it numbers about 20.

As every other developed country, Finland has been very popular destination among the Nepalese students. In addition to the students, there are a lot of families either on work or running their own business. So, Nepalese community is not that scarce in a country with a population of just over 5 million. We enjoy get together in Nepali festivals and organize picnics during summer. Overall, Helsinki is a lively city for Nepalese. Outside of Helsinki, you strive to find people leave alone the Nepalese. Social life of Finland is what makes Finland one of the difficult places in the world to live. Even the people living in the same apartment hardly talk to each other. Government policies encourage young ones to live away from parents. Unlike Nepal you will find a lot of people living in student apartments although their parents have a beautiful bunglow nearby.

Finland maintains one of the best living standards in the world. Every aspect of life e.g. apartments, roads, traveling, shopping centers are well organized. Even simplest of issues are taken care-off very well which has not been taken care-of in most of the developed countries as well. For example it is very easy to clean windows as all the windows open inwards. In most other developed countries like Ireland many window cleaning companies are earning their livelihood just because the windows open outwards. I tend to call it waste of resources. Finnish society is a knowledge based society so you find research given a very high priority here. But back home, our leaders keep arguing to make new Nepal without proper research, vision and cooperation.

Living away from home is always a problem but you need to consider few more issues before you take a route to the Nokia land. First and foremost is the language. Finnish and Swedish (spoken by 6% people) are official languages here in Finland. However, almost all the people especially the young generation can speak English although they are a little bit shy to speak in English. On the other hand, to run day to day activities like shopping and traveling, language would be very important because you find that all the goods are named in Finnish. Finnish is a language of Finno-Ugric language family and very difficult to learn. I would like to share a joke on this issue of language “Which is the heavenly language? Finnish, because it takes an eternity to learn”. In order to be involved in some part time or full time job language is utmost important. Few IT related jobs in multinational companies like Nokia have English as their working language so IT sector can be a easier way into the job than any other field. Second, important issue would be the weather. Since the Finland is located very close to the North pole, you get extreme cold conditions here with a temperature of as low as -50 degree Celsius. In addition to that winters are very dark and sunshine is only for 2 to 3 hours. In those two to three hours also you hardly see any sun. Summers are rainy and day light of 23 hours can also be frustrating.

In spite of above mentioned difficulties Finland can be a good destination as a student, an entrepreneur or a worker if you are dedicated and hardworking. I have seen many of my friends who have come here as a student especially in the IT sector have good positions in the companies like Nokia and in the university departments. Since the education is free and if the student doesn’t live a lavish life, one can manage his living expenses with around USD 500 a month. So, students can get good education working very few hours or during weekends. Students in masters degree can complete their education in little more cost than Nepal even without working. Having said that we have a lot to learn from this country, education is only one of the flowers in the whole garland.