Finland is a wonderful Country. Daily life in harmony with the Nature make this Country a real piece of Heaven on earth.
But there are difficulties for foreigners who wanna set up their New Life here.
N.1 Cultural Conflict.
I can't describe them one by one, but generally we can consider into a "cultural conflict" all the differences with our own Country in reference to: Geographical position, History, Language, Mentality, Education, Style of life.
It was hard in the beginning to match these aspects in my relationship with my finnish boyfriend.
And let me add, that you need a solid relationship and strong feeling, for go over that.
Only a deep "listening-understanding" mode, can clarify and make possible a good relationship avoiding misunderstoods.
For relationship I mean every form of those, not only being a couple. With friends, collegues, people in general, you need to be wide open to the "listening-understanding" mode and to be ready to the possible and potential misunderstood.
Finnish people can sound too silent, closed and even asocial. Genuinely I think they are just shy and, I have to admit, in some case suspicious.
I don't wanna extend this case to the "finding-a-job" field right now, but for sure it concerns the daily life.
N.2 Difficulties
If you move to Finland with will, optimism, open mind and with no high expectation, the ONLY - or maybe we can even say "THE" - problem is the language.
You can easily manage with English in every situation, but if you want a job YOU MUST SPEAK FINNISH FLUENTLY.
Don't trust the nice advertisments or what they say into their promotional website. I paid severaly this trick :(
If you don't speak finnish, you are completely out from the labour market. Even if you speak excellent English and you have a good resume. Only in few fields they don't take in account your Finnish skills: all the jobs that have something to do with web, graphic, programming, IT (information technology) or if you are a professionist/artist as photographer, stylist, painter, etc.
For me, Professional Accountant and Financial Analyst is quite impossible find a job unless I start to speak (and write...) Finnish fluently. But let me say, that I have a high level doubt that the language is a way for contain the immigration. Sad to say, but if they aren't racist, for sure they have an high prejudice towards foreigner, at least when they have to decide who hire.
This is clear through the job advertisment into the Job Office webpage. A good (and sometimes more than good....) Finnish is required even for a basic job as for example for cleaning. Unbelievable but true: they expect you speak fluent Finnish even for washing stairs in the middle of the night or early in the morning.
Well...even if the European Constitution, BAN the discrimination for "Nationality", they seem don't care about it.
This is the only NEGATIVE point of living in Finland.
Because getting a job is extremely important, since put you in a condition to be treated with equality (even if for the EU citizens should be obvious by the rights given from the EU Constitution), you will be registered under the finnish social security and make strong your position fot to be considered resident permanently in Finland.
The advice I feel to give for people who want to move here is: It's very difficult, almost impossible, (unless you come here and work as professionist or set up your own business) get a job if you don't speak a good Finnish :( The treatment it's hard even for EU citizens.
Move here only after you have a good knowledge of the language, or if you have already got a job.
As I said, there are some field where Finnish skills (at least in the beginning) is not required or fields in which they will provide you a training. But for all the rest it's very very hard.
But never give up! Work hard and fingers crossed!
