We reached our final destination on the travel course: Helsinki, Finland! Our first business visit in Helsinki was at a company called Helsinki Partners, where we learned so much more about the work-life balance culture in Finland. Here are some fun statistics that we learned about Finland! Helsinki is Europe’s most walkable city and most people enjoy walking to and from work. Even though the city is incredibly pedestrian friendly, the public transportation is widely utilized and will take people basically anywhere they want to go in the city. During our experience thus far, we have been extremely grateful for the easy public transportation and have been using the tram to explore this exciting city!
Another fun fact we learned is that Finland consumes the most coffee out of every country in the world! That leads to the next statistic: Finland was rated the happiest country in the world! We are sure that the happiness all ties in with the extensive amounts of coffee that Finnish citizens consume to keep them energized throughout the day! Finland is also the second most inclusive country in the world, having a diverse population attracted to living in the region. People enjoy the work-life balance in Finland because they get plenty of time off (similarly to Sweden) and usually take off the entire summer. Finnish people have a mandatory five weeks off during the year, which does not even include additional holidays! Most of the people in Finland own summer cottages that they escape to after the snowy winters and work remotely from there, typically for the entire month of July. Finland is a great place to live for families and it has plenty of activities for people of all ages and cultures to enjoy!
During our stay in Helsinki, we decided to explore what Finnish people do after work hours and during the day. Helsinki practices Fika, similar to Sweden, and also has shorter 6 to 8 hour work days. However, during the day and after work, we saw a lot of the public spend time learning and reading at the Oodi Library, walking around with family and friends, eating dinner at cafes, and picnicking in the local islands and parks, such as Suomenlinna.
The Oodi Library was quite impressive in its facilities and architecture! The public are given access to thousands upon thousands of books in different languages, hundreds of computers, 3-D printers, video game rooms with gaming consoles, musical instruments available for rent, music production studios, kitchens to rent, and study rooms. People can sit outside on the library patio, grab coffee in the library cafe, and children could even rent sports equipment to play outside on the courts provided by the library! It had everything you could imagine needing, plus more. There were so many families, college students, and elderly people spending their time exploring all of these facilities in their down time. In America, our libraries cover the basics of being able to rent a selection of books, music, and films; however, some come at a price and some do not offer a huge selection. We are unable to provide the level of programs and utilities that we saw here, which speaks to the American lifestyle, in that a majority of our citizens do not spend time at educational facilities for their leisure. Americans consider education to be associated with work, not necessarily as something that is part of our lifestyle.
Of course eating at cafes and spending time with family strolling along the port is a common occurrence we have seen throughout Scandinavia, not something most Americans necessarily can afford to spend time on. However, something unique to Helsinki was the huge amount of picnicking we saw! On the mainland and on the island of Suomenlinna, several couples, families, and children sat in the flower fields for a picnic under the sun. In California, we often see this kind of activity at the beach, which is pretty similar to here (but we cannot say the same for the rest of the country!). Overall, the work life balance in Finland seems to be obviously much more catered to than here in the United States, but we already knew that!
Our visit to Helsinki concludes both our blogs and this amazing trip! We had the best time in Scandinavia and feel so fortunate to observe the different cultures in this part of the world! Now, back to the real world. See you soon, California!
