Juan in Finland: One city at a time
Blog by JUAN JESUS ENESO
Hi my name is Juan, I am from Spain with roots in Africa. Throughout my life I have lived in Spain and in London (UK), well that is before I moved to Finland. In this blog, I will give you a sneak peak of my time in Finland so far.
6 years ago, I boarded a plane towards Tampere from London, full of excitement but fearing this new adventure in life.
Needless to say, that when I came to Finland, I could not speak any Finnish, that lead me to commit so many language mistakes! Some of them will haunt me for the rest of my life, but it was all part of the experience.
TAMPERE
When I first arrived in Tampere I couldn’t help but fall in love with the nature and the look of the city, there were forests everywhere and so many lakes! It was a perfect blend of city and nature.
One thing that became apparent to me was that people didn’t seem used to seeing a black person, people kept following me with their gaze on the bus, streets, supermarkets, etc.
I was offered the chance to learn Finnish and its culture on an intensive course that would last 1 year approximately. I grabbed that chance with both hands! It was not easy, seriously Finnish is both simple and hard! During that course I got to have my first work experience in Finland. I worked at a supermarket, I was so afraid of any fast speaking Finn to come and ask me for something I did not learn in the course… it happened, again and again but it helped me a lot.
My piece of advice is to join a finnish course ASAP.
JYVÄSKYLÄ
While I lived in Tampere I heard lots of rumours about Jyväskylä being a great city to live and attend university, a few lecturers and friends mentioned JAMK. I applied to study Business at JAMK, let me tell you I was extremely excited when I got that acceptance email! It did feel like a milestone!
My time in Jyväskylä was by far the most exciting time, I made so many new friends, I had to figure so many things alone. The city center really came to life at night time specially on Thursdays and the weekend.
Jamk was everything I hoped for and more, from the first day I felt support and guidance, without JAMK’s guidance I would have been lost on so many occasions in terms of settling in town.
Jyväskylä is a beautiful and active city but after the covid-19 happened I spent 6 months trying to find a full time job to no luck.
I miss the days before covid happened and I lived in there.
HELSINKI/ESPOO
After not being able to find a job in Jyväskylä, I decided that it was time to try my luck in the capital, I had heard so many rumours about Helsinki throughout the years that I thought I knew what to expect from the city… I was wrong, Helsinki feels like a city outside Finland, its full of everything, so many people, so many immigrants, so many Finns, so much English! I came to Helsinki ready to put my finnish skills up to the ultimate test, yet I find myself having to use English more than expected. One thing is clear in terms of work, Helsinki is the place where immigrants will have the highest chance of landing a job. I believe that other cities in Finland are still a bit behind in terms of welcoming non-finnish into their companies.
When I came to Helsinki I thought that I would be able to accomplish all my goals quickly, but yeah working full time and having to travel long distances to work everyday has left me with no time to fully enjoy this amazing city.
WISH LIST
My time in Finland has been full of challenges and memorable experiences, I went through very tough times in which I did not know if things would get better, but they did. I fell in love with this country and there are many places I haven’t visited yet, there are many things I still need to do. Life for me is a bunch of videos that become pictures with the passing of time, Finland has the perfect backgrounds for those pictures. In the upcoming months I would like to travel to Lapland, Moomin world, cruises, cottages, see the northern lights, ski, ice skate and many more things that I would love to do again and again.
This has been a little summary of my life in Finland, there are other things I could talk about from food to culture, but I could leave that for a future post. For now I am interested in knowing what’s your Finnish story?