The First Impressions

It's now five days since I've arrived to Vaasa, and they've already went through lots of things. In this post, I'm going to talk of a lot of points that they've highlighted to me since I've been here, in a superficial way, and when I have more perspective, I will talk about it again.

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So, first point - the weather. Finland is a country where it rains a lot, and effectively it really rains a lot, I however live in Bretagne, but here when it rains it lasts an entire day and it's intense. And when its nice, it's really nice, but the temperature doesn't go beyond 20 degrees. From what we hear, the weather is going to be worse and worse, in terms of rain and the temperature!

In terms of the duration of night and day. In August, night falls around 11. 30pm and the sun rises towards 5 o clock in the morning. But the days are going to distinctly shorten over time. And a shocking thing, the Finns don't have window blinds. None.

And concerning prices, cigarettes are less expensive than in France, but they're not displayed, if you want to buy them you must go into a booth or kiosque, and ask precisely for what you want and show your ID in order that the shop assistant takes out the wanted packet. Alcohol then on the other hand is very expensive, you must pay 20 euro for a bottom of the range bottle of vodka, and alcohol isn't served in supermarkets but only in specific shops.

Life in general is more expensive in Finland, for example for a pot of Nutella that's 2 euros 50 in France, here it will be 4 euros.

And another thing highlighted to me! The meal times of the Finns, they have breakfast at 11am, and have dinner at 5pm! Difficult to take on this as a habit!

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