Helsinki Relocation Package: City as a Service

Most employers offer private healthcare and even if you buy the insurance yourself its inexpensive. I also disagree that difficult cases aren't dealt with properly on the public side, in my experience it's been the opposite: simple cases are ignored, but serious ones are taken care of properly.

There's plenty of English language daycares and plenty of non IT jobs for non-Finnish speakers in both smaller companies and medium sized ones as well. IT consultancies are a different story.

Winter is no worse than in mainland Europe or Britain and if you go a bit inland, you see a lot more snow.

If you use a big bank like Nordea then you get great English service, at least in my experience, same goes for other services.

I grew up in Finland and wanted desperately to get away when I finished high school, but having lived in the UK, Germany and Russia and spent some time in the US, my views have changed.

An aside, if anyone reading this is interested in relocating here as a developer, we at Toughbyte can help. Here's a blog post we wrote on the topic:

https://www.toughbyte.com/blog/relocating-to-finland-as-a-de...

Finally all our open positions in Helsinki can be found here:

https://www.toughbyte.com/positions?location=Helsinki%2C+Fin...

Children learn the local language, partly because of immersion, but also because they're corrected nearly constantly when they begin to speak. We forget that when they're capable of "good" communication.

I'm seeing interesting things here, I speak to the child exclusively in English and as far as he's concerned I speak/understand zero Finnish. I'm hoping I can start speaking more Finnish in the near future, he should be able to understand I'm "mostly English".

One obvious thing that really drives the language home is the notion of pronouns. Finnish has no gendered ones, so when he speaks English to me he'll be "Mummy is asleep, he will wake up soon?". I have to keep saying "Mummy is a girl, we say she". I've been doing that for 8+ months, and he still doesn't get it right. That's the level of repetition that's involved in learning a new language.. and even now it hasn't "stuck".

English seems common in the groups of immigrants you come across too. I know people who've moved from France, etc, and there are lots of immigrants from various countries - many of whom speak their own language, and English as the second. Some go on to learn Finnish to a greater or lesser extent.

I've ordered food in restaurants, cider/whisky in pubs, etc, and had the server just reply back in English.

Me: "saisinko omena cidre?" Them: "Do you want ice?"

On the one hand it is helpful at times, but on the other hand it is deeply frustrating. 90% of the staff at the local newsagents has pulled me aside on a quiet morning and asked "Do you prefer English or Finnish?" I say "Finnish", but to be honest the conversations I have with the shop-staff are mostly them reading the total, and asking "would you like a receipt/bag/anything else?" so it doesn't help me in any real sense, but it's nice they offer/ask.

321.9 people per square km in Oklahoma city.

IME helsinki these feels & has the dynamics of a big city.

Oklahoma city feels mostly like a suburban sprawl.