Cost of Living in Helsinki
 

Is it expensive? How much for say a beer? loaf of bread? Mcdonalds Meal etc. Any other drawbacks?

Finally cost of ferries as a foot passenger to day Stockholm, Tallin, etc?

Regards

Pin

You should tell us where you are living currently to give you an accurate comparison.

Expensive compared to what?
US: yes
Copenhagen: no
Romania: hell yeah!

In CPH I don't think twice about spending near US$8 for a beer and US$3 for a fresh baked loaf of bread. McDonalds is a place I haven't visited for a number of years.

Ferry prices you can check yourself. Click here

*I live in CPH and not HEL, so I'm not the best to answer your post. However, the Nordic region is relatively expensive, excluding TLL and the Baltics, which is inexpensive for a Dane.

Pin Head.
HEL is not so hellish! Standard EU prices really. Beer is always expensive in the Nordic region unless you drink at home where it is acceptable. But everywhere is €6 a beer now virtually. Cars can pricey.
Foot pax on the ferries can be very cheap, ($10), as it is based on "what are you going to do on a boat for 12 hours?" Eat, drink and gamble. That is how they make their money.
Overall, less than the UK I reckon but then again most places are!

Prices in Helsinki:

apartment rent .- 600-1000 eur/month, dependable in which part of city for a 1 room apartment

food- restaurant - main dish - 12-15 eur, mcdonalds, big mac meal 6.50 eur.
beer in bars, 4.5 eur, shops around 2 eur.
ferry tickets - to tallinn: around 20-40 eur, stockholm with cabin in ship , around 50-60 eur.

hotels- 60-150 eur / night

Helsinki & Finland
 

Yes, pricier than many West European countries, though anywhere is cheaper than London.

There are perks however. Try the Traktor bar downtown night time and the Tempelikirkko daytime for starters.

Expect clean air and water too.

Dig up a few local friends who'll take you berry-picking in spring and off on mushroom-hunts in autumn.

It's a place you'll remember fondly in old age: go for it!

Go to Stockmann around mid-October and let the yellow ghosts chase you all over the place. Hullut Päivät!

What is it like learning Finnish?

Sorry for the thread drift but what about Stockholm cost of living - more or less than Helsinki? Just curious. Heard a radio documentary about Stockholm about a year ago and it has stuck in my mind.

Sorry for the thread dift.

Thanks and hello from Cork!

Some people say it's very difficult because Finnish is one of few languages with any international influence and between 60 and 80% of all the words in the language are of Finnish origin. I think it's because when it became an official language, some hundred years ago, they replaced most of the foreign words with Finnish words. The vocabulary and structure of the sounds of the words also have very little in common with other Indo-European languages. Whether it's difficult or not would depend on your mother tongue.

Another tricky bit is that many Finnish people don't actually pronounce the words as they are spelled. Spoken Finnish can differ a lot from written Finnish.

I think the best way of learning it would be to hang out with people from Finland. Maybe have a chat and a beer in the sauna. That's what they do sometimes. No offense! You could also do a language course. Maybe a bit of each.

Moi mukkulat! Yksi, kaksi, kolme...

It is a very common misconception that Finnish language is a difficult one. Not true. Come to Finland and you will notice that even small children can speak Finnish.

You do not need to learn
 

Evey body in finland speaks at least some sort of english. Everybody. You can, not just make it by but, thrive in finland on english alone.
Because nobody speaks finnish we have to learn other languages:)

Stockholm cost of living nothing like as bad as people believe. Some things are lots, some less. Prices vary enormously depending on where you go. Shop around and it is affordable. BUT, if your habit is sitting in a city bar every night it is a hole in your pocket. Beer £4-£6 a pint! And don't even ask about wines and spirits.
Strangely though, all the off-licences are government owned and run and beer/wine very affordable. Even cheaper than UK. But bring any spirits back from elsewhere.
Public transport is cheap and excellent. Petrol £1 litre or less.
Eating out can be pricey but the quality is superb virtually everywhere.
What you have to do though is put it all in the pot and then compare with elsewhere. With property taxes now capped at £600 max a year I reckon overall it's less than UK. And with the never ending tax rises in UK even they are less too. :ok:

I would disagree with arthur. I find Helsinki more expensive than London, indeed other than Norway it is one of the most expensive places I have worked from.
However it may well be what you know. I know London well so know where to go, whereas in Helsinki I am more or less a tourist.

Agrees & Disagrees
 

Silverknapper, I was comparing London and Helsinki of the 1970s. Gosh, my input is outdated now.

Kelly Hopper, the off-licences are state-owned despite EU membership because the Swedish Government managed to prove that state-owned off-licences enhanced, rather than inhibited, competitiveness. Essentially, their off-licences offer a wider selection of alcoholic beverages than available to consumers elsewhere in the EU. However, Sweden legalized wholesale wine merchants to import and sell to the state monopoly.

For restaurant dining, there are special deals at or after lunchtime.

One souvenir to bring home is cloudberry jam, made from orange-coloured berries that only grow in the marshes of the Arctic Circle.

Coffee tends to come at a steep price but look for the "påtår" sign: it means free refills or refills at whatever token price is listed next to/right under that word.

Emma Gemma,
Finnish is a Finno-Ugric language with vague kinship to Hungarian; it falls outside Indo-European. Spelling is phonetic so that if you hear a word correctly and have learned the alphabet, you'll spell it correctly on your first try. In fact, you can do that with words you don't even understand. However, there are dialects that will put each its own spin on pronunciation.

Finland was a Swedish colony from the 1100s to early 1800s when Charles XII lost it to Russia. The czar promoted the development of the Finnish language and its culture. When the Bolsheviks got into the driver's seat, Lenin magnanimously announced that membership in the USSR was voluntary and anybody who wanted out could go. Finland jumped at the idea and walked. Then Lenin appointed Stalin as minister of nationalities to ensure the Finnish precedent wouldn't get too trendy. The ensuing war between Reds and Whites in the USSR was mirrored by a corresponding one in Finland. Finns also saw Swedish as the language of the colonialists and moved to purge Finnish of its loan words from Swedish. One heated issue was what to call the telephone. Swedish speaking Finns wanted to call it "telefoni" so that foreigners would be able to instantly identify a phone booth when they saw one; Finns insisted it should be called "puhelini", derived from the verb "puhua" = "to speak. Over much blood, many broken noses and a few bodies, it was "puhelini".

Yes, too, Emma, Stockmanns is the upmarket department store -- it also owns (owned?) the Akademiska Bokhandeln across the street, which is (was?) one of the finest in Western Europe.

Oh yes: Finnish humour is served dry with a straight face. Drink but follow each word carefully unless the other fellow's slurring with that vacant look we've all had in our more vibrant years.

Yes again, Kelly, there are evening ferries to Tallinn, Stockholm and Åland, an island halway to Stockholm with a unique legal status and lots of rural charm. Besides the charm of each of these destinations, the boats are famous for cheaper drinks, cheaper food, gambling and frenzied tango dancing. Fail studiously to show surprise when you see some folks almost too drunk to walk by the time you're less than half an hour into your cruise.

Which has the more pleasant summer - Stockholm or Helsinki? The radio documentary that I heard about one year ago on Irish radio was comparing the different Scandinavian capital cities and the conclusion reached was if one was to visit one to get a feel of what an initial visit to Scandinavia would be like the radio show host suggested a visit to Stockholm for a good all over first impression.

What do you think?

"What is it like learning Finnish? "

I remember that after a few shots of Koskenkorva or Finlandia Vodka I'd become almost fluent in the Finnish language... Must be some ‘language ingredients’ in those beverages... :ok:

Finland is a beautiful country btw...

Stockholm and Helsinki (Helsingfors in Swedish ;)) are both great cities... I'd say spend a few days in both cities if you can...