 I first take driving lessons many years ago, in Scotland. They aren't a big success. Being quite small I need the seat fairly far forward; then, around my eighth month of pregnancy, further forward still–until propelling the seat close enough to reach the wheel of my instructor's car, a Ford Fiesta, becomes an impossible task. With this realisation my driving career in Scotland comes to an abrupt end.
After moving to Oulu, my husband and I and our family of two children and assorted bric-a-brac immediately buy a car–a Ford estate–which he leaves at home to jet away on business trips. For three years I walk past it in minus twenty degrees, on my way to the bus, before deciding enough is enough: the time has come to resurrect my driving efforts.
I hasten to 'Young Drivers,' the driving school most visible to any foreigner visiting Oulu town centre. The name isn't a translation: the name is in English, making me feel I am on to a good start despite my daughter's fears that they won't accept a person of my age. I don't shop around: a mistake. Prices vary greatly, I find out later.
Kirsi, an extremely nice female instructor, greets me on arrival, speaking excellent English and displaying the endless patience she will come to rely on in my case.
To learn in Finland, you buy a driving package. The package includes compulsory theory lessons, a theory test, and a driving test. If you fail the theory, you pay separately for each subsequent test you take. Fail the driving and the same applies, but the examiner stipulates how many extra lessons you require before you can make your next expensive attempt.
Imagine that the average cost of the package is €1414, that before any extra costs incurred by your failing to pass, and you'll begin to get the picture. It's your driving skills or your savings.
Of the many driving schools in Oulu, most can be found around the city centre but others, located in local shopping centres, may charge lower fees. Almost all the schools have websites in Finnish that usually state whether they can provide tuition and materials in English. I recommend you visit promising-looking schools in person.
Before long, I discover my main setback: passing the theory test. It's not that difficult. Most people I know have passed it first time. For me it becomes an ongoing nightmare. The merest mention of the word 'test' has always transformed me into a state of immense panic, completely immobilising my brain from any rational thought.
Imagine this coupled with sitting the test in an extremely small, claustrophic cubicle with only an enormous computer for company, its three huge answer buttons requiring a gigantic effort to push down, and you will understand why I have a sure recipe for disaster on my hands.
After my third failed attempt, my brother calls to dispense sympathy. "It can't be easy to sit these exams in another language," he points out. His sympathy is diminished when I inform him that I am taking the test in English.
My final humiliation happens when, after a fifth failed attempt, my instructor and the nice lady at the test centre put their heads together and decide to provide me with an interpreter who will read out the questions and allow me extra time to answer. This service is usually provided to foreigners who do not have a great command of the English language.
I pass on my sixth attempt, without the interpreter and through the power of complete and utter shame.
My practical test takes only two attempts to pass. My instructor is in a state of disbelief. Learning to drive in Finland involves motorway driving, parking in a multi-storey car park, learning to fill your petrol tank, and 'dark driving,' which sounds sinister and consists of going in a small group with an instructor to a nearby unlit forest area to practice driving in the dark.
These are all things I would not have been required to do at home, but which make me feel more equipped to drive out on my own after passing the test.
So after all my setbacks, it is with huge relief that a few weeks after passing my tests, I set off to the police office to pick up my official license. Everything is behind me now: sub-glacial temperatures; theory exams; the wind. I am free to set out on the open road.
Oh, apart from the small matter of the second Finnish driving test.
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