Many times as a Finn you hear the sentence: “it is like a lottery win to be born in Finland”, which as a child I didn’t really understand, but now with time I have started to appreciate Finland and the culture more and more. There are a lot of beautiful things in Finland, like nature and four totally different seasons. What I also value a lot in Finland is the community that Finns have.
The community in Finland is something really special compared to many other countries because the population in Finland is quite small. For example, meeting Finnish strangers in a different country feels like meeting someone you already know, because you don’t come across other Finns every day if you are travelling or living abroad.
Furthermore, because the Finnish population is not very big, the Finnish jokes feel more intimate and private. Kind of like inside jokes inside a certain friend group. For example, last year when Käärijä was representing Finland in the Eurovision song contest, Finnish people started to call everything green as “Käärijä’s color” and started selling random stuff that are green online in Tori.fi for an expensive price. There are plenty of weird jokes like that, which many times only Finns understand.
Finns are usually loyal and trustworthy, which I don’t know is the reason for that also the fact that the population is so small that it feels like living in a close community, or where is the reason coming from. Anyway, that is something that I’ve started to appreciate a lot since living in Madrid now for over 4 months. In Madrid, I hear almost every week that someone’s phone is stolen, which I have probably never heard or experienced happen in Finland, even though I have lived there in the capital too for most of my life.
When living abroad you really start to appreciate little things in your home country in a special way. I’m happy to be Finnish and I’m happy to be able to move back there whenever I want, but also I am really happy to have the experience of living in a different country, and will most definitely live in many different countries in my future.
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