• Lahti

Lahti. The first city north of Helsinki where the region of the great lakes begins. The place the most far from my country I've ever been to.

I am living recently in Finland, to where I boldly came after the most demanding challenge in my life: to live under the same roof with the love of my entire lifetime, which happens to live here in this town but she's from Estonia.

I changed a diverse but chaotic landscape of my motherland to this monotonous but harmonic landscape between Lahti and Helsinki.

I like challenges. I left a place where I was born and felt comfortable, although not fitting in so much anymore, due to this global economic crisis that has shorten worldwide job positions in number. I don't know yet how and even if I will fit in here. But I'm trying. I think I can have something to bring to this country and to its people. If on their side they will be willing to find this along with me.

It could be a truly win-win situation we have here. 

It could. But it probably won’t be. Finns don’t seem to like that much foreigners in their lands, generally speaking. They seem always very reserved. They could for their own benefit be more open to the different visions migrants here bring to this society quite closed in itself.

t’s true that finns can easily be quite self-sufficient. They don’t seem to need anyone to show them how to live on some alternative way, diverse from what they get used to along several years of some cultural isolation.

And their language is an immense barrier they left built against the rest of the world. In so many places around this world people are used to see on the streets of major cities these letterings in the local language and in english, as well… Not here. And they don’t have so few tourists as one could suppose.

Finns sometimes seem not to believe on themselves to be able to socialize with other people. Not even with their nordic brothers. Or even with their linguistic neighbors, the estonians. Finns are kind of post-modern eskimos.

Will I ever be a good citizen here? Since I was not able to be so where I was born… Should I want it, even? Will I be “civilized” by force here? Will I let this happen?…

I am only sure of one unique fact: love has brought me here. Let’s see what will be the price I will have to pay with my soul.