YOU KNOW YOU HAVE BEEN IN FINLAND TOO LONG, WHEN……

1. You rummage through your plastic bag collection to see which ones you should keep to take to the store and which can be sacrificed to garbage

2. As you walk past the Parliament Building in Helsinki, and see the statue is titled "Svinhufvud" you no longer read it as "Swinehead"… instead you think "What a good Swedish name!"

3. When a stranger on the street smiles at you:
a. you assume he's drunk
b. he is insane
c. he's an American

4. You don't think twice about putting the wet dishes away in the cupboard to dry

5. A friend asks about your holiday plans and you answer, "Oh, I'm going to Europe!" meaning any other Western European country outside Scandinavia.

6. You no longer scrunch up or fold your paper money. You always put it in your wallet

7. You see a student take a front row seat and wonder "Who does he think he is!!??"

8. Silence is fun

9. The reason you take the ferry to Stockholm is
a. Duty free vodka
b. Duty free beer
c. To party hard….no need to get off the boat in Stockholm, just turn around and do it again on the way back to Finland

10. Your coffee consumption exceeds 6 cups a day and coffee is too weak if there is less than 10 scoops per pot

11. You pass a grocery store and think "Wow, I had better go in an buy something!"

12. Your native language has seriously deteriorated, now you begin to "eat medicine", "open the television", "close the lights" ´, and tell someone "you needen't to!"
Expressions like "Don't panic" creep into your everyday language.

13. You associate pea soup with Thursdays

14. Your idea of unforgivable behaviour now includes walking across the street when the light is red and there is no WALK symbol, even though there are no cars in sight

15. Your notion of streetlife is reduced to the few teenagers hanging out in front of the railway station on Friday nights

16. Your bad mood becomes your good mood

17. Sundays no longer seem dull with all the stores closed, and begin to feel restful instead

18. "No comment" becomes a conversation strategy

19. You finally stop asking your class "Are there any questions?"

20. The fact that all of the "v's" and the "w's" are together in the phone directory seems right

21. Your old habit of being "Fashionably late" is no longer acceptable. You are always on time

22. Hugging is reserved for sexual foreplay

23. You begin to understand Jussi Jyylanpaarvi's broadcast of the hockey game

24. You refuse to wear a hat, even in –30 degree weather

25. You hear loud-talking passengers on the train. You immediately assume:
a. they are drunk
b. they are Swedish-speaking
c. they are American
d. all of the above

26. You give up on trying to find fat-free food and pile on the butter, cream and sugar

27. You know how to fix herring in 105 different ways

28. You eat herring in 105 ways

29. You no longer look at sports wear as casual wear, but recognize them as semi-formal wear

30. You can now reconstruct the missing letters on a building. For example :MERI…….LITTO OY

31. You have undergone a transformation
a. You accept mustamakkara (Black-blood sausage) as food
b. You accept alcohol as food
c. You accept

32. You understand why the Finnish language has no future tense

33. You no longer have to search for the flushing mechanism

34. You no longer see a problem in wearing white socks with loafers

35. You no longer correct people who say MAC Donald's

36. You just love Jaffa

37. You've come to expect Sunday morning sidewalk vomit dodging

38. You know that "religious holiday" means, "let's get pissed."

39. You enjoy salmiakki

40. You know that "men's public bathroom" is another phrase for sidewalk

41. You know that more than three channels means cable

42. You get all Swedish jokes

43. When you're hungry you can peel a boiled potato like lightning

44. You've become lactose intolerant

45. You accept that 80 degrees C in a sauna is chilly, but 20 degrees C outside is freaking hot.
Also, you accept -30 outside as a reasonable temperature, but anythuing under 22 indoors is unreasonable...

46. You give the air hostess your undivided attention when she demonstrates how to fasten, tighten and unbuckle your seatbelt. You eye the person sitting next to you suspiciously when they don't do the same.

47. You don't waste alcohol. When you spill your drink on the desk and actually contemplate slurping it up anyway

48. You stop asking "how are you" when you meet people. It's just plain "hi" or "mmph" or *nod*. Communicating becomes less and less important...

49. It doesn't matter what nationality the other person is, they'll understand finnish as long as you talk really loud. If this doesn't help, just talk very slow (but still very, very loud).

50. Upon hearing finnish when abroad, you immediately duck for cover and hope they go away. Whatever you do, you in NO WAY, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE utter a single finnish word (By god, they might want to come and talk to you, as if that was completely acceptable finnish behaviour when not in Finland!)

51. You start to believe that pulla is a treat.

YES, I'm Finnish, and I was really laughing at this xD there's so many things that ARE true :D I just love these kind of things, even though I dislike stereotypes.. xP

So.. :
*is there anything like this about your country? :3 if so I'd love to read them :P
*what kind of picture did this thing gave you about Finland? :lol:
*reindeers
*pulla
*anything relevant x)

You know you've been in England too long when...

1. You don't even bother looking out of the window when you get up in the morning to check what the day is like. You know it is overcast.

2. You believe that Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday are all good nights for drinking. Sunday day is also entirely reasonable.

3. You can't remember what 'customer service' means.

4. After a big night out you find yourself looking for a Curry house and not a 24 hour McDonalds.

5. You start to accept queuing [standing in line] as a way of life.

6. More than three hours sunlight on summer days seems excessive.

7. You always call soccer 'football' ... and you have a team ... and it's not Manchester United.

8. You don't think twice about buying a packaged sandwich.

9. A sunny lunchtime means searching for a patch of grass and stripping off practically down to your underwear.

10. You expect men to actually cut, comb and style their hair (using hair products). And to wear decent clothes. Jeans and a T-shirt are no longer socially acceptable.

11. You think 40 quid for a haircut is quite reasonable.

12. You finish every sentence with 'Cheers' or "Innit", and start every conversation with Hiya or Alright

13. You only just realise you have lost your sunglasses-you left them in Phuket last trip.

14. You start thinking English cuisine isn't all that bad after all, I mean, it's hard to beat a full English breakfast.

15. You are on to your 6th umbrella and your second overcoat.

16. You buy a disposable baby BBQ from Argos.

17. You realise your sunscreen is the stuff you originally brought from home with you.

18. A day at the beach means wearing the warmest clothes you own while standing on golf ball-size pebbles and the thought of swimming doesn't even enter your head.

19. You actually say, "Sor'ed" or "it's all gone a bit pear shaped".

20. Wearing a suit in a pub is relatively normal attire.

21. You have given up complaining about the Victorian-like banking services offered in the UK.

22. You have given up explaining why you are half an hour late to work as no-one notices or even cares. In fact - you may even join the one hour gossip session around the coffee machine before booting up your computer.

23. Coming to work with a hangover is entirely accepted and indeed expected at least once a week

As an English person living in England I can happily say all of these are fact and give and true and accurate picture.

The picture I get of Finland from that list is that everyone is so timid they take any excuse to actually have some fun! I'm sure that's not the real case though.

I have a question though! When I think of Finland I think of Janne Ahonen. I saw him smile once and I'm still freaked out. Hardly anyone watches ski jumping here- how big is it actually in Finland?

That's awesome. XD I'm not Finnish, but things like that are typically funny in general.

I especially enjoyed the bit about how randomly smiling strangers are probably American... It's just as creepy (to me, anyway) in the U.S. when that happens....

I DON'T KNOW YOU. Why are you smiling at me!? :shock: :? *run away*

ANYWAY. It made Finland sound like it would be fun to go to.... Possibly not live in, but go to. *wonders how much is exaggerated* (See, I know how much I THINK is exaggerated, but I'm often wrong about these things. XD)

Irish people are supposed to be drunks and really angry... I am the latter...

I think it's pretty big in Finland Kat ^^ Janne Ahonen is pretty famous here xP everyone knows him.

and come on, we DO smile :D

@Wordstreamer, yeah you should come here as an exchange students xD they always have fun here ;) hahah

Heh, thanks. I'm sure you're actually very happy! :D

Originally Posted by KatMagenta

Heh, thanks. I'm sure you're actually very happy! :D

yeah ^^ I admit that I'm not very talkative and that I'm a bit shy, but still, I do smile a lot :P AND I do look people in the eyes xD

You know you've been in england too long when..

1. You don't even bother looking out of the window when you get up in the morning to check what the day is like. You know it is overcast.

That is SO true! Although we have had some nice weather recently.. But it's still true!

When you refer to Finland as home and want to visit your original country, but only for a few days.

After reading that, Finland sounds pretty cool. ^^
I don't know how much of it is true...
But I would like to go and visit. =)

My friend told me that Finland was where rock was
originated, or was where really great rock music was...
is that true?

I'm in Canada, and most people have the impression that we live in igloos, all have at the very least huskies if not the whole dog sled, keep beavers in our backyard, can speak French and somehow believe that everyone they know we know even if they live in the only 2 cities they know: Toronto, and Vancouver.

I'm in central Canada (Manitoba) and I don't live in an igloo, but my best friend does breed huskies, we have a beaver dam in our backyard, but we live on the river, and yes it is mandatory to take French until high school. I think most people who make lists like that just take something common from the region that is uncommon from other places and writes it down. They are funny though.

Originally Posted by DarkMelancholy

After reading that, Finland sounds pretty cool. ^^
I don't know how much of it is true...
But I would like to go and visit. =)

My friend told me that Finland was where rock was
originated, or was where really great rock music was...
is that true?

O.o I wouldn't know.. are you sure he/she didn't mean heavy metal? D:

@aphrodite, yeah people think we have POLAR BEARS here in Finland xD lol...

Yeah, she said rock. She doesn't listen to metal. ><

That's really funny.

We should compile a list of things for "you know when you've been on Menewsha too long when..."

Originally Posted by juniper_silver

That's really funny.

We should compile a list of things for "you know when you've been on Menewsha too long when..."

that's a good idea :D somebody should deffinitely make one.. ^^

LOL! Well we do have polar bears in Churchill. They're actually a tourist attraction >.<

I wonder if people would come up with some if I put a post about it in the community discussion. Would you care if I did? It's kind of copying off your thread, so you could make it if you want.

Originally Posted by juniper_silver

I wonder if people would come up with some if I put a post about it in the community discussion. Would you care if I did? It's kind of copying off your thread, so you could make it if you want.

I don't mind if you do it, it's not my idea.. xP so go for it if you want to! ^^

Cool thanks, I'll link to your thread.

Finland is a funny place. Have you ever heard the Finnish folk song 'Leek Spin?'

Originally Posted by Canni

Finland is a funny place. Have you ever heard the Finnish folk song 'Leek Spin?'

umm.. Leek Spin? nope.

Originally Posted by Sagitar

umm.. Leek Spin? nope.

Oh, well you should listen to it. Search it up on YouTube. It's catchy! : D

oh you ment Leva's Polka... I didn't know what a leek spin was xP

meh, I didn't even know about that song before that animation came around.

It makes it seem that people in Finland are a bunch of lazy, self centered, anti-social, drunks. That was pretty funny.

Originally Posted by Yeah

It makes it seem that people in Finland are a bunch of lazy, self centered, anti-social, drunks. That was pretty funny.

we're not lazy :o we are hard workers. :3 yep.
self-centered? maybe some are, but that could apply to all people around the world xP
anti-social? you got me xD I'm one.
drunk? yes, please ;3