At the moment, I have less than 2 weeks left before I return to Finland. It's hard for me to say "before I go home", because I feel I am at home. Mentally and physically. I've left my mark on this apartment, and it feels as much like home as my apartment in Oulu. And it's not just the stuff I've dragged in of course, it's the everyday life we've shared for more than 2 months now. Our own habits and routines. It's gonna suck so bad not to have those.
But it's not time for goodbyes yet. I still have lots of wonderful days left. And I have a great summer behind me. It's not a given that long-distance relationships stand the challenges of everyday life, and I've heard of cases where couples broke up pretty soon after finally living in the same city. Naturally we've had our challenges as well, combining the lives of two grown-ups with very different pasts. Not to mention operating in a foreign language. But luckily, our challenges have mostly been minor things. Things like how high should pictures hang on the wall and what can you recycle and what not. On the bigger things we pretty much agree, and as for the smaller things - well, we've been trying to learn the subtle art of compromising.
The whole summer hasn't been smooth sailing, though. I've had some quite disturbing, yet very healthy experiences of being in a minority. I always knew that the Swedes think that us Finns have a funny way of speaking Swedish, and that maybe in their eyes we're a bit uncool - they used to rule us for centuries, afterall. But during this summer, I've had experiences I never thought a Scandinavian could have within Scandinavia. I've felt slightly discriminated, nothing serious but still a very uncomfortable feeling of being ignored and neglected due to being Finnish and not speaking fluent Swedish. A feeling of being an outsider. And let me tell you, it feels very insulting and degrading. It has nothing to do with our circle of friends, quite on the contrary. Everybody I knew before and everybody I've met have been very nice and very patient with my deficient language skills, understanding that I really want to learn and therefore, I need to practice. The problems have been elsewhere, on a more official level. But like I said, it's also been healthy. I have a bit better understanding of what real "outsiders" might experience here in our "tolerant" Scandinavia.
Only when you have to operate with a foreign language for a longer time, you realise the incredible importance of language. With insufficient language skills, you feel like an insufficient person. Whatever you have inside you, whatever you're thinking and feeling, you can't quite express. A lot of the time you decide not to say anything instead of saying it wrong, or stopping in the middle of the sentence because you're missing a key word. You get scared that the people you're talking to will roll their eyes, look bored or awkward and walk away with some lame excuse. That's definitely something I'll try to remember next time I'm talking to someone who speaks less than fluent Finnish. And no matter how uncomfortable it's been at times, I think it's something all of us self-righteous majority members should experience.
Was that enough Swede-bashing for 3 weeks' worth? Good. And for the record, I still think the Swedes are awesome and that Sweden is a country I one day (soon) want to live in. There.
-Karoliina
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