Lapland Calling

Have you ever had this feeling that you desire to live in a place where you’ve never been to? I never felt anything like that until we decided to move to Finland. 

To be honest, I never wanted to come to Finland. Actually, it was always out of the question. If there’s one thing I knew for sure, it was that I could never live up north. Especially not in Finland. I always thought that Finland is too cold, too boring and too quiet for me. I don’t like fishes, I don’t like the sauna, I hate darkness, I am not a nature lover, the language sounds weird and blonde, blue-eyed guys were never my type anyway.

Then I met my future husband… Through him, I could get to know Finland step by step. I was surprised to realize, how good it is for me to be here and how easy it is to find my place in Finland. Eventually, I had many reasons why I would like to move to Finland and why we should start a family and raise up children here. But why the hell I wanted to move to Lapland?! I hadn’t got the slightest idea.

This thing came up between us for the first time two years ago, when we still lived in Budapest. We prepared to come to Finland, my husband looked for a job and he asked me if I would be willing to live in Rovaniemi. There was an opened position over there. Not only I said yes without hesitation, but later I realized that actually I really wanted to move there. We ended up in the city of Helsinki back then, but one year later, when he started to look for a new job, I brought up the topic and we started to talk about going to Lapland again.

This whole idea seemed a bit crazy, regarding the fact that either one of us has ever been to Rovaniemi. Not even close. We don’t know anybody there. It felt like driving into a one-way street in the wrong direction. Everybody wants to move to the south, to the capital city or nearby. Why would we go up north? But anyway, we were just daydreaming about it while he sent his applications to different places around the whole country.

‘Wow, it’s going to be a big change to move to Lapland! But isn’t it great to see dreams come true?’ This is how someone reacted, after I told her about my husband’s new job in Rovaniemi, a few weeks ago. Suddenly I didn’t know how to react. I couldn’t remember if something like that had ever happened to me before. After we found out that my husband got himself a new job in Rovaniemi, a sense of fear tightened my stomach. Because it’s one thing to daydream about something and it’s another thing to actually pack up everything and set out to the unknown. Those things that attracted me earlier made me frightened now. Leaving all the friends and family behind, moving close to the Arctic Circle to an unknown city with an unknown climate where we know nobody? What if we can’t cope with darkness? What if we can’t find new friends? Does my husband really want this or he just wants to move for my sake? What if he won’t like there? Will he blame it on me then?

Luckily I didn’t have too much time for creating crazy theories and going nuts, because we needed to move to action. He has to start there at the beginning of May. Although it felt like almost mission impossible for me to find a proper apartment to rent 800 km from here and move there without even having our own car, we were able to arrange everything within a blink of an eye. I said to myself that something that goes so smoothly can’t be wrong. Also, my husband reassured me that he is as excited as me about moving to Lapland and start living there. He also told me that we have nothing to worry about. If for some reason we wouldn’t like our life there, we can always come back to the south or wherever we want to.

Technically we are ready to go, we only have to visit some of our friends to say goodbye and have to sell a few things and pack up the rest. We’re moving on the 30th of April, so we’ll have three days to settle down before he goes to work. I don’t say that I am not excited or worried a bit anymore. But then I always think about our new apartment and try to imagine how many new experiences waiting for us. I hope that we’ll like Rovaniemi and we’ll find our place living close to the Arctic Circle.

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