Discovering Finland, Discovering Myself

 (c) Miss Reads

As far as life-changing experiences go, studying abroad for a year is probably one of the things that will change your life and especially your outlook on life the most.

It certainly was for me.

My decision to go to Finland was not necessarily rational. It just felt like the right thing to do, and I figured following my gut couldn’t be such a bad idea.

It wasn’t.

The most obvious change that a year abroad entails is of course the fact that you’re away from home. And I don’t mean ‘away’ as in 30 minutes by car (which is the distance between my flat in Salzburg and my childhood home), but ‘away’ as in a few hours by plane. This change was what I looked forward to and dreaded at the same time when I departed for Tampere. As it turned out, distance was one of the best things that could ever have happened to me. It’s not that I had been particularly clingy before – I had, after all, been spending two weeks per summer away from my parents for over ten years by the time I went abroad. But going away like that still was a huge leap towards full independence. Especially because Salzburg is so close to my hometown. Besides living relatively far away from my parents for a year, being abroad also helped me overcome my shyness in meeting new people. Before my stay in Finland, I had huge problems approaching people I didn’t know. During my stay, and especially at the beginning when everybody was arriving, I had to approach people I didn’t know. It was either that or become a hermit, wallowing in self-pity.

A second experience that made my Erasmus year a life-changing event was how much I learned, not only about myself, but also about culture in general. Both Finnish and German. I guess culture is a bit like gender. You just can’t walk away from it (at least not as soon as other people know where you’re from). Of course
,
there are some culture-specific behaviors (like wearing with sandals) that you can actively avoid, but there are other things that are so ingrained in your nature that you don’t even notice them until you take a step back and get an outsider’s perspective.

One re-occurring event that made me think ‘God, I’m such a German’ time and time again my behavior at traffic lights. Whenever we were walking around in downtown Tampere (which basically means walking down Hämeenkatu the other Germans and I would stop dead if the light was red. We just couldn’t bring ourselves to cross on red. Not even if the street we were about to cross was one of those tiny side-streets no cars ever drove into or out of. We wouldn’t even do that at 4 a.m. walking back from a party, to the exasperation of a French friend, who, walking nonchalantly across the street, would say: “Come on you guys, we
’
re not Finnish!” This experience not only showed me how German I was, but also how similar Finns and Germans are in some ways (another similarity, for example, is the way punctuality is valued in both cultures. Being too late is just not really an option in either Finland or Germany).

Part of Hämeenkatu and Hämeensilta Bridge

©Wikitravel

And then there was the business with the bread. I don’t eat that much bread myself (I’m more of a muesli girl at breakfast), so I didn’t really experience a longing for good German bread.

Other people did.

I don’t know how often my fellow Germans told me how bad Finnish bread was, and how much they missed good German bread. I stopped counting around the fifth time someone brought that topic up. The German’s love for bread has actually come so far that even comedians are commenting on it. The best piece about this phenomenon is by Gayle Tufts:

After all the moaning about bad bread I heard in Finland, I can honestly tell you she’s got it down to a T. That’s exactly how Germans abroad talk about bread.

Another thing I discovered about myself in Finland is how much I love starting over in a new place. Discovering a new city, not as a tourist
,
but as someone who’s planning to be living there for a while, thrills me to no end. This experience has led to my degree that included another term abroad, I was sold on it.

This was not the only academic situation, however, that was changed by my experience abroad. Being an Erasmus student, I had the opportunity of not worrying too much about my courses. Of course
,
there were some that I knew I would receive credit for back in Salzburg, but there were also a lot of courses that I took only because I thought they sounded interesting (I know, I know, I’m a total geek, but bear with me). One of those courses was a lecture on Game Theory that turned out to be one of the most interesting classes I ever did. Another case in point was a lecture on Environmental Art. Ultimately, I realized that I tend to be better if I do different courses in different departments at the same time because every department opens my mind to new modes of thinking, and also to new cross-connections I wouldn’t find otherwise.

As can be seen in my choice to leave Salzburg after completing my BA, my Erasmus year was not only life-changing during my actual stay; its effects lasted much longer. Not only in decisions pertaining to my academic career, but also in how I see the world. I learned things about myself while I was in Finland, but I also learned things about myself when I returned and had to contend with ‘re-entry shock’. This not only meant that I missed Finland and the friends I had had to leave behind (this is something I actually think I will never get over), however. Just like the things I learned about my own ‘Germanness’, it pertained more to things I would not have noticed had it not been for my ‘re-entry shock’ experience. The most surprising had to do with Edward Hall’s theories about personal space. The first few times I went out after my return, I was constantly stressed and on edge in a way I was not used to and could not explain for some time. After all, the places I went to during these first few weeks were bars and pubs I had been going to for so long, they were practically my second living room. And then one night things started to fall into place and I realized that my tension was caused by the subconscious feeling that people I didn’t know were getting too close to me. Apparently, Finns need more personal space than Germans, and during my year in Finland, I had adapted to their boundaries without realzing it.

This is only one example of what kind of feelings and surprises the return can have in store, and even though I re-adjusted to German boundaries of personal space relatively quickly after my return, it is still one of those experiences that I will remember for a long time. Not least of all because it showed me how much an experience can change you without you even realizing it.