Welcome to my new blog! I'm a Finnish man who took a year off from work and moved to England to live with my English girlfriend, Kayleigh. Some people asked me to write about experiences about living in England and how it differs from the way I've used to live in my past life in Finland. So this blog will be about my findings and experiences from moving in, living and travelling around the country, which is completely new to me. Well, not completely, as I've visited London maybe ten to twelve times during four decades ('80s, '90s, '00s and finally '10s). Anyway, when I travelled outside of London last Summer for the first time, I finally realised that the part of the capital area I've experienced so far, is completely different from the rest of the England. Therefore I recommend everybody coming to England to travel outside of London to get a real touch and feeling of the country. So far I've noticed few things which are different between London and rest of the England: the dialect and amount of tourists. Here's an example of one of the strangest dialects outside of London, it's called Black Country dialect and they even have an own vocabulary! Imagine what that accent sounds like to a person like me, who's basically learnt the way of speaking English in American films shown subtitled on Finnish TV. And I haven't even met any Finnish people outside of London yet, which seems to be quite surprising. While I was visiting Black Country area last summer, I bet I was the only Finnish person in the whole area.
I want to explore the real English way of living. Therefore it was actually really nice, that the town I moved wasn't London. My current home town is now Basingstoke, which is in Hampshire county. Basingstoke is a large town (108.000 inhabitants) quite close to London, it takes only 45 minutes to travel to the capital by train. I have no expectations of what is it like to live in Basingstoke (or any other English town or city either), so I believe everything will be new and exciting for me. There's so much to see and explore in the country which is totally different comparing to Finland: starting from the amount of people living here: in Finland we have 6 million inhabitants whereas in UK has 10 times more people in the area of half size of Finland. That makes the greatest difference which I already noticed during my previous trips in here. Every place is rammed with people including shops, train stations, roads, motorways... There's no silence in this country. That's fully okay with me, because I like crowded places, and if I get too stressed I can always take a hike and go to Finland for few days or a week.
About myself: I was born in Finland and been living there permanently until now. Moving from place to place inside the country is familiar to me though. Moving has happened to me approximately every 9th year and each time I've at least doubled the distance from the previous location. Last movement (10 years ago) before moving in England was from Helsinki to Oulu, and the distance was 600 km. However, now this leap is a lot bigger: the trip from Helsinki to Basingstoke by car took 2800 km through 6 countries. The trip lasted 7 days through interesting route, which included three ferries, unlimited speed motorways, bridges, toll roads, petrol stations, different kind of accommodations (hotels, motels, home stay, bed & breakfast) etc. I'm gonna tell more about that trip later in my blog, if you're interested.
I decided to write this blog in English even it is my second language, and therefore I sometimes struggle with expressions and nuances, sorry about that. However, writing in English gives me a great opportunity to practice essential language skills, which I will definitely need in here. On top of that English speaking reader potential is "a bit" bigger than Finnish speaking; and as a bonus my girlfriend promised to help me on writing and correcting the texts, thanks for that. I think it is also good to make sure that I don't unintentionally insult anyone with my straightforward and sometimes rough way (= Finnish way) to tell things. Anyway, all kind of feedback is always good, so let the word spread!
Cheers! Kimmo
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