It's been a month here now and things are settling down. I'm legal. I have a job. I pay taxes. This immigrant can begin to strut a little.

Tampere

I'm even beginning to get the hang of Helsinki; link places together, get around without a map and say please and thankyou (it's the same word-yes!). So on the weekend, ready to broaden my horizons (and visit the mother-in-law), I got the bus with Dog and Girlf. up to Tampere (above). One definite plus of Finland is that dogs are allowed on public transport here, you don't even have to pretend to be blind.

Dog claiming her right to ride the bus. 

Tampere is also known as the Manchester of Finland. It's the old industrial centre with big warehouses and giant chimneys. It's sat in-between two big lakes which you can swim in in summer and skate on in winter. Definitely worth a visit. A good friend of mine was playing an excellent selection of punk records at the Soho Bar and I got the chance to talk with some of the locals. I insist that talking to people in pubs is by far the best way to learn about a country and sure enough, within just a couple of pints, I had learned that bears don't attack women because they are scared of their pussies. University of life.

Summer has also begun to leave us. In Helsinki the change of the seasons is pretty drastic. I found this cool graph (I'm mostly nerd) which shows the crazy seasonal change in comparison to Madrid, Spain. Don't be too confused; Basically the light blue line shows the number of daylight hours throughout the year for Madrid. The Dark blue line the same for Helsinki.

Obviously to get from 19 hours of daylight to just 6 is going to take some pretty drastic change and that's what's happening now. Winter is coming a bit like The Day After Tomorrow.

Ridiculous movie

OK. Well not quite, but the leaves are turning yellow.

On the plus side this means that the mushroom season is go. Watch out Ray Mears,

God

Legalize it.

It turns out that arriving to and entering Finland was easy. Unfortunately, long gone the days of Victoria, my British Passport mighty as it has been doesn't allow me just to waltz into town and work/sign on/get sick as and when I want.

So, I've had to wander through the bureaucratic hoops to get into the system. Here's how to do it.

• ADVICE: First the City Hall on Esplanadi has an advice service (and free wifi and amazing toilets, also free). Make an appointment (they seem keen on appointments here) and Hamed will talk you through your options which basically boil down to, get someone to offer you a job.
• TAX: Once you have a job and more importantly a contract, and it doesn't seem to have to be a particularly concrete one, go and see Vero, the tax office. I love tax offices. Perhaps unsurprisingly they're always the most efficient and coherent government institution and Vero is no exception. The only problem is when the one employee attending the immigrants disappears off for lunch for an hour and you just have to wait for her to come back. Tip, get there early. However, once she sees your contract she'll give you an ID number (Henkilötunnus) and you're in. You can now pay taxes - Huzzah!
• FIVE-O: Then go to International Police where a big viking man will send you to the lovely lady who will explain in perfect English that you don't really need to sign in and you're free to work here as long as you leave the country every three months. 
• BANK: Another appointment will get you a meeting with a bank person. Mine's called Matilda. As long as you have the Henkilötunnus (above), a contract and you haven't previously stiffed any Finnish banks then they'll give you an account and you get to choose from a selection of 12 designs for your debit card. I went for cassette. Retro. 
• DOLE: I also registered at the cleanest job centre I've ever seen in my life but I'm yet to hear back from them.

English Job Centre

And that's it. You're good to go. Everyone was lovely, they all spoke good English and knew their job.

Not sure what'll happen if the idiots back home decide to take Britain out of the EU but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

For now, all being well, I'll be working by the end of the month. Hello Finland.

Suomi

We made it.. After crossing almost all of the latitudes and six longitudes I stumbled into an almost deserted Helsinki airport, picked up my bags and found my shaken but very alive pets and walked into Finland. After all the worry and stress of the preparations it was all amazingly easy. A bit of an anti-climax really.

On the morning of the 23rd I drove to the airport with Santiago's finest Taxi-Service (not a corrupt policeman), checked in, watched Dog and Cat get wheeled away, got on plane, drank a few red wines, fell asleep, woke up and watched The Big Lebowski, changed plane, walked around Schipol airport for about an hour (it's huge), got on another plane, got off, no passport control, no pet check, welcome to Helsinki.

Now we just have to figure out how to live here. Can't wait.