Country: Finland

Finland is a Nordic country located in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the west, Russia to the east, Norway to the north, and is defined by the Gulf of Bothnia to the west, and the Gulf of Finland of the Baltic Sea across Estonia to the south. Finland covers an area of 338,455 square kilometers (130,678 sq mi), with a population of 5.5 million.

Helsinki is the country's capital and largest city. Finnish, the native language of the Finns. The climate varies relative to latitude, from the southern humid continental climate to the northern boreal climate. The land cover is primarily a boreal forest biome, with more than 180,000 recorded lakes. You can hear more about Finland from this video.

Finns are interesting people. They are know throughout the world as being shy and hard to get to know, and this is very true. However, what everyone forgets to mention is that once you have made friends with a Finn it is for life. Making friends here is hard, especially because you tend to have to put in the work in. Inviting your Finnish friends out for drinks and picnics, exploring the city and asking them to show you the Finnish traditions are great ways to get to know Finns. Unfortunately you will probably have to be the one to ask your Finnish friend to do these things, at least in the beginning. Once you have broken that barrier and become part of their group - you will be invited to everything.

Summer life

Finns love summer, and love enjoying a whole afternoon drinking, eating and chatting at a restaurant terrace. Most restaurants have a summer terrace where you can sit at very cosy chairs, often beanbags or lounge chairs and just enjoy your afternoon. Another common summer activity is heading to your "mokki". A mokki is a Finnish summer cottage, often not connected to electricity and with a compost toilet and found on the edge of a lake. Finns head there for pretty much the entirety of summer, and if you are part of the friend group you will likely be invited to go there too.

Cuisine

The traditional cuisine in Finland is very ... interesting? Mixing sausages and milk, adding jam to pretty much everything, rice cakes and tons of doughnuts as well as pastries stuffed with almond extracts! Test them out, some people love them but it isn't for everyone! If you ask your Finnish friends or co-workers they will probably direct you to their favourite cafe, and it is a nice ice breaker to get to know them.

Coffee

Coffee is probably one of the most important parts of being a Finn. Finns adore coffee, they go out for coffee at all times of the day - and are known for drinking the most amount of coffee per capita. The best way to start getting to know Finns is through coffee. Ask to go to a cafe and be prepared to spend the next few hours aimlessly chatting about everything. Filter coffee is scared, so be prepared to have filter coffee available to your Finnish guests, and try to have different flavours as that will really "wow" them.

The language

Finnish is an incredibly hard language to learn. There is no way around it, unfortunately.
Luckily most Finns speak English incredibly well, so you should be perfectly fine while you learn the language. Finns are also pretty helpful - especially if you just tell them you are still learning Finnish, they will often help you out and tell you the sentence or word(s) you are looking for! Swedish is the other national language of Finland, and is a lot easier to read and understand if you already speak other Germanic languages - so it may be worth learning how to at least read basic signs in Swedish in order to get around, in the beginning anyway!
There is one word you definitely need to know though - "No niin". This is a filler group essentially, you can use it for anything and it means pretty much everything.