As our faithful readers already know from reading Jesper’s piece on Downton Abbey, the tradition with our “I was wrong about”-series is (quite obviously) to admit to having been wrong about something.  The other less obvious theme seems to be the surprise of trying something that you had always branded as “not for me” and finding out that you actually like it after all! I won’t be talking about any of the many everyday experiences that could surprise you at any time anywhere. This won’t be about liking a strange new taste combination like waffles with bacon and hot sauce, or having raw egg in your liquor. I’m not talking about liking THAT series that you swore to everyone that you could never like (Downton Abbey, eh?) or a newfound passion for extreme sports or SUP boarding. What I am actually referring to is an extempore change I made in my locale a while back.

In September, I moved from the Helsinki metropolitan area to Jyväskylä in Central Finland. Now I’m not saying there’s anything shocking about living outside of Helsinki, and definitely nothing wrong with Central Finland, but for a girl who has always lived in a million or multimillion inhabitant metro area, and who hadn’t even applied to University outside of the Helsinki region, to voluntarily move to a city of a 100+ thousand was surprising to say the least… and in the middle of nowhere from a city girl’s point of view!

Obviously I was anxious about the normal problems that come with moving to a new place like having to learn anew all the small things from where to find your local grocery stores to which uni cafés to attend for the best lunches. To add to my normal moving angst, all kinds of small town girl nightmares were running through my mind. I mean every small town in Finland is the same right? A small shopping center in the middle with a market square and no decent bars, pubs, cafés, and definitely no working public transportation system! As you probably already guessed dear reader, most of these preconceptions turned out to be false when examined closer. Stereotyping just seems to be hard to avoid.

Some of the time however, I ran into small town problems I hadn’t even realized to expect. One Saturday evening we decided that we would like to go for a little date and head to the ever-romantic dark halls of movie watching, locally known as Finnkino. We checked the time of one feature we had been thinking of going to watch and proceeded to freshen up. As oftentimes may happen with us females, getting ready took a few moments longer than expected, which lead to us arriving “a few moments” later than the official beginning time of the movie. This would never be a problem at 20:30 on a Saturday night at other movie theaters I had attended previously, but it turned out that as this particular feature was the last showing of the night, the ticket sales boxes had already shut at the start time and all doors were locked! Thankfully my preconception of local bars had been quite off in the student-centered “opiskelijakaupunki” and the night could still be carried out in style.

But to turn to confessing my sins, there were many things I imagined to be a problem beforehand, which often turned out to not be a problem, despite being true. Take for example public transportation: from an Espoo perspective, buses running every ten minutes often causes a problem in moving from one place to another, so how in the world could it work when there are only buses running once a half hour or once an hour? However, in a densely knit university-centered city, there is no need for buses. Everything is simply a kilometer or two away, and the local traffic runs on bikes, not on buses. The ease of getting around on a bike (or walking in the very likely case of bad weather during the Finnish winter) is hard to imagine when downtown in my new home was suddenly closer than the local grocery store had been at my parents’ house in Espoo or closer than my elementary school had been in my childhood home in the US. Walking home from the bar had never been an option before!

I was also worried about being an outsider. I assumed that in a smaller place it is harder to meet anyone, as everyone already has their own tightly knit group. What I seemed to find instead was quite the opposite. In Helsinki classes and groups are so big that everyone branches off on their own paths very easily. Being a student in a smaller community knits the groups much tighter, but also increases interest in a new face. The personality of Jyväskylä as a sporty and university orientated city helped me feel at home easily, and especially helped in finding like-minded friends. I even found connections with many real grown-up adults, who I would never have expected to bond with over university life and adjusting to a new environment.

For me the year away was really a way to find myself and get some distance on the things I had always held as self-evident. I came to really appreciate having a central location and being able to focus on my own passions. Getting some space enabled me to prioritize according to my own interests, instead of listening to what had always been expected of me by my family. I learned to appreciate taking my own time and space away from the hurry and hassle that life has always been while trying to manage the expectations of both myself and everyone else. They always say that you should walk a mile in someone else’s shoes to see their perspective, but I think walking that mile not only helps you see the way others think, but it often helps grow your own personality and helps you figure out what it is that you yourself want and need.