Sabita Rao, an IT professional in a pale winter jacket, pulls up a chair in a corner of Oulu’s popular Bisketti café. Twenty-three years of age, from Bangalore, India’s garden city, Sabita left the manufacturing metropolis with its population of 6.5 million to work in a little-known settlement in a country off the Baltic Sea. She knew nothing about her destination, didn’t speak a word of the language, and had no testimonials from friends or relatives to arm her for the journey. These odds might seem reckless to some, but judging by the spring in her step and the slurp in her coffee, she likes it here.

Sabita’s qualifications are in industrial engineering and management, a degree she pursued in order to join the army – only to be told they couldn’t use her particular mix of subjects. The sudden bad news left her puzzled and looking for other options. A Finnish firm, one of many to expand into India after new laws have liberalised the Indian economy, seized the opportunity to recruit the articulate young graduate as a technical writer to their new Bangalore branch. Her job required her to document software and hardware according to weekly schedules, but before she was long out of training a move to Finland seemed inevitable. “I was actually told I was going to Helsinki,” she says.  “My tickets had been booked, and about two days before my actual flight – two days before I was supposed to leave, I was told it’s been changed.”

That change saw her stepping onto the asphalt of Oulu City Airport in October wearing a polo shirt and an expression of shock. “It was ten degrees. That was my coldest ever. I just froze. I stood out. I was carrying my jacket and unpacking my suitcase to take out a long overcoat. Everyone’s walking around in these summer jackets and I was frozen.” Thankfully her firm had arranged everything else including an apartment in the city centre; it wasn’t long before she was installed at her new desk. Of the first things she noticed, including a professional atmosphere and increased responsibilities, the most startling was just how welcoming her colleagues were. “I’ve found it to be relaxed. Everyone’s quite noisy. I expected it to be a lot quieter here, formal and serious. I was told not to act like a kid coming out here – but it’s very nice. I get ragged every day at work.”

Her duties require her to fish information from local product designers in English, and to attend meetings, but the toughest language problem she’s encountered is reading the ingredients on supermarket labels. “Everything’s in Finnish unless it’s Euroshopper so I end up pointing and asking people. They don’t mind.” It’s clear she’s been charmed by the Finnish combination of friendliness and efficiency. Eyes wide she describes how once, seeing her examine a carton of milk, an old lady exclaimed “that’s very good for you. Pick it up, okay.”  Oulu natives, particularly at supermarkets, have been curious to know where she’s from and what she’s up to.  “All kinds of people come up to me. It’s very nice. They ask me if it’s cold enough, especially when it’s minus twenty-six degrees.”

She describes herself as an outdoors person, and, true to her word, is as least as infatuated with Oulu’s scenery as she is with its people. She recounts the stages of the affair: in October she couldn’t stop telling everyone how beautiful the colours were; at minus thirty she photographs her eyelashes to send mum; none of her family believes that she’s walked on frozen sea, not even from the pictures. Perhaps the most appealing account of all is of the first time it snowed. “It was amazing. I had a meeting going on and I couldn’t concentrate. All I wanted to do was go in the snow. An amazing feeling. You just keep grinning at the snowflakes.” With the new year has come the anticipation of new delights. The summer is months away but she’s seen pictures. “I’m going to make my company stay after they put me through the winter.”

Sabita’s a music fan but doesn’t know Oulu bands, something she’d like to correct. She has been to see Oulu’s ice hockey team, Kärpät, twice. “It just blew me away. Those people just run on ice and you can’t believe it.” She’s also skated numerous times herself under the tuition of friends and recovered from bouts of “purple knees.”  A “pubbing partner” shows her around the Oulu bars, and several of her colleagues have put her onto Oulu’s “absolutely huge” pizzas, though she wouldn’t eat a whole one at a time.

On more serious matters–not that the diameter of a pizza is a frivolous thing–she says most natives react positively towards foreign professionals. “I’ve seen people who are pretty welcoming and open and keen to work with foreigners and a few who are not so keen. I’ve even been told we’ve got to watch out for you Indians because you’re taking our jobs. But it hasn’t interfered professionally.” She knows several Indians working at another Oulu firm. “Indians tend to gang up,” she quips, “once they’re outside the country.” Asked if their experiences differ to hers, she explains that it depends on the policies of the employer. “Their partner company back home takes care of them to an extent but not all the way. They do have to go house-hunting for example. It’s been different for them.” She wonders if a committee exists to take care of helping foreigners coming in (*), and wishes the local offices would stay open longer. “I just never make it out before, say, three-thirty, and then when I get here everything’s closed.”  For news and events, she mostly relies on word-of-mouth from colleagues.

How long Sabita will stay in Oulu depends on her employer and the projects she’s involved in. She misses her friends and family in India, but says they are very happy for her.  “I would recommend Oulu to someone making a career move from another country. It’s a growing city. It’s just a life you can see in people. Some places, everyone’s running somewhere. Here they’re just living it.”

(*) A committee does exist: the EFA (Expatriate Family Adjustment) programme:
http://oulu.ouka.fi/efa/welcome.html