Placement in Finland?

[DJMK4]

Indeed, best of luck to anyone learning Finnish. It's marginally easier if you already know Hungarian apparently since they belong to the same family of languages but that just means it goes from hard to still not very easy. That said it's worth making a bit of effort there as apart from anything else the Finns are more likely to feel a little better disposed to you for having shown a bit of willing.

Oh and if you're in a bar ask about the local drink - I'm sure the Finns will be delighted to point you in the direction of salmiakki*. Saunas are great, especially if you can go outside to roll in the snow/take a dip in an Arctic river in between sessions in there.

*The cynical may assume it's because they just want to see the reaction but I think it's because they actually like it.

Yes yea!! Bloomin cold!! Sitting In a sauna then getting out and going into an artic lake certainly raises some hairs! make sure you do some skiing and hire a skidoo if your up in the snowy mountains

 

[Evilsod]

It really depends. I've had loads of summer holidays in Finland and I've been there in mid 30s temps and in mid teens. And there's some hellish thunderstorms from time to time.

Its supposed to be a hot summer again this year so I'd definitely guess the former.

As for the thunderstorms...



Her parents house the day before I got there last August

 

[drowsyn]

I'm Finnish. You can certainly get by on English. Even if someone doesn't speak it, chances are there's a person nearby that'll help. The climate is... Interesting. The winters aren't that bad. It's more of a mental thing, really. It's really ****ing cold for five minutes, and then you get used to it. Just try to be slightly unconcious when you go somewhere in the morning, otherwise the freezing cold wind will make you want to jump off a bridge. The incredibly hot summers have caused more trouble in recent years. Our houses are designed to perfection to keep warmth inside, which works against us during really warm days. It was 32 degrees celsius in my apartment just the other day. That's not nice. That particular situation is probably better the further south you go though.

And just... Don't try to learn Finnish. There's immigrants that have been living here for two decades, who can still barely get out a half-decent sentence. It's a stupid, stupid language, and has no use anywhere except among the five million people here. There's a concept called Rally English, which comes from the way our racing and rally drivers speak English. The sad thing is, most everyone speaks Rally English, and that's in large part because the Finnish language conditions us to speak in a certain way.