(Group photo in the Nuuksio forest)
Stereotypes are true. If they were not true, they would not exist.
When I boarded a plane for Finland, via Germany, I was nervous. I had heard that Finland was a very different country from South Africa. Apparently, it had an education system that benefited far more people than SA's did. It had little corruption. Newsweek voted it the best country to live in. I did not expect it to be as good as that. But from a cultural perspective, I did expect something different. Let's be honest, Finnish people are not really in world news very often, unless they are driving rally cars or striking oil with a company like Nokia - not that common for them or any country. And when Mika Hakkinen and Kimi Raikkonen win races they hardly brag, which maybe makes them less interesting for celeb tabloids too.
Well, Finns are not that strange in terms of their customs but they are distinct. Their obsession with saunas is a tad unhealthy. Although, I am sure people do get into very personal conversations in winter in Finnish saunas, when the outside is unrelenting. I am not sure that the winter is that nasty, as a travel brochure that came with my ticket to Finland said the average temperature in winter was -10 degrees celsius. Discussions about Finnish weather can wait for another blog post, however.
Anyway, back to culture shock.
When people travel to countries or even cities or towns they do not know much about or have not been to before, they often experience culture shock. One needs to adapt to unusual ways of living. It can be frustrating but also rewarding. However, the culture shock I experienced early and even during my trip was intense, just one aspect of the trip that beat my expectations.
That was magnified by me meeting people from 20 countries. It was basically like experiencing culture shock 21 times. Did I survive it? Did I thrive within it? You would have to ask the 20 other people on the trip and the organisers to find out if I did. I will tell you that I would probably have drained out Bobby from the US's singing in the streets if I had stayed with him for a few months but I did not within a month. He is a good singer but there are only so many Sinatra covers that a person can handle. I really am not a fan of Michael Buble.
I feel I gained valuable insight about life because I saw how people from other lands reacted to a new land and to each other's land. This made my FCP trip more useful than I originally imagined it would be.
Moving onto Finnish customs, I can say that Finns' reservedness is clear from how they communicate with one another and especially foreigners. They greet people from arms length. They shake hands. They do not kiss each other hello. They only hug people they know well. These are all quite South African traits, so I was not that phased.
What were much more interesting, were the habits of certain people in my FCP group. I will blog about the more unusual or entertaining ones in later posts.
On a side note, Finns take their shoes off at the door. Apparently this is true of 1-in-2 Finns, one of the speakers told my group in one of our early lectures. I think it is true of almost all Finns. I left my shoes in Savo as a result but lucky I got them back in Helsinki.
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