Plus Mojang are Swedish.

In spring time the air in towns can be quite bad, thanks to very little rain in spring, and studded winter tires extracting all kinds of unhealthy small particles from the tarmac into air. Maybe not as bad as a sandstorm in Beijing, but close.

OOps, sorry, I mean käyt. Dunno how I mannaged to reverse the letters :P

As for your first questions...well, Sweden sounds nice too, but Finnland has this "free-information and free speech" flare for me. One of the reasons I want to leave Germany is to get away from that corrupted bureuacratic wealthfare state system here which kills any culture. GEMA for example, Germany's retarded RIAA.
And I have to look forward that will happen with Europe in 10 years. I don't see any future in Germany. Okay, they have Crytek (EA-poisened) and that awesome healthcare system, but what else? It's one of the retarded countries which CENSORS games and ruins landscapes with wind mills!

Ok, "Missä käyt?", roughly meaning "Where do you visit?".

I was a bit wondering why you'd leave Germany, but I guess you have a point with the game censorship and stuff. As great countries as Germany and Australia appear to me, this whole censorship on games in both countries is just... something. I'm a bit worried that certain German view on gaming might become the norm in the whole EU zone, but I hope that doesn't happen. Maybe EU crumbles to dust before that.

That said, I'm a bit surprised about the raunchy bits in games like Witcher 2 and God of War. My my, games weren't like this when I was a kid! It seems the game warnings about some content not being suitable for kids mean business after all.

I guess I should've added commas around the "especially Helsinki" part so people wouldn't mistake with the context.

Due to lack of highly polluting factors and strict environmental laws the air is relatively clean when you compare to bigger cities in the world.

Depends on your preferences. If you're into traditional tourist vacations you might want to check out http://www.visithelsinki.fi/en which gives pretty much all the basic information needed.

Seeing you're into game industry, asking Finnish game developers for some sort of tours couldn't hurt. :)

Well, some games on GoG are even illegal here. Like Blood.

And yeah, I fear that as well. Germans take over the EU commissions for some reason (oh the irony), so I won't be surprised they'll dictate German politics on Europe once economy gets more stable.

1) True. Finnish is a very unique language for the lack of gender and articles, to begin with. Also, you can do fine magic with agglutinative features of the language. In other words, you add syllables to a word to "reduce" the number of individual words.

Puhumme pelituotannostammekin. = We talk also about our game production.

2 vs. 7 words :-)

2) True/false. If you hang in bars, sure people drink all the time. Other people... well I never touch alcohol (I don't even eat tiramisus) so choose your company right... It should also be noted, that depending on where a random foreigner is going, he may end up in areas which are totally 100% Swedish speaking, without any Finnish language road signs or anything.

So before choosing which language to learn, it's better to take a look at the map first... Not really. We are cool.
The further you go outside of capital area, the more assholes you encounter. Fact.

I never touch alcohol either. It's looking grim for the "Finns always drink" hypothesis with this sample.

I haven't lived in Finland in many years, but it is my mother tongue. I asked my wife, who happens to be a German, to describe Finnish langue in one word. She said alien. (:

Since Finns' reactions are usually so mild to different things, even to sight of a drunkard who has peed in his pants which are not even in his legs anymore, it may seem to a foreigner that such behaviour is considered normal and even acceptable in Finland.

I personally don't feel Finns in general drink more heavily than e.g. the dear Englishmen. French seem more sophisticated though, even the street drunkards I saw in Grenoble had red wine bottles in their hands, not vodka.

But that's because rest of the finns don't like arrogant sons of bitches from Helsinki. Fact. ;-)

Personally I would never want to live in Helsinki (or any other big city for that matter). I like to travel there on occasion but would never want to stay for more than few days. I prefer peace and quiet of smaller towns.

Oh and as for alcohol I happen to be absolutist and don't drink alcohol, smoke or use drugs but I do know many people who use drink excessive amounts (guess why I became absolutist) so we have people in both extremes and most fall somewhere in between.

As for living in Finland, I, like others have done already, would suggest visiting our country few times and getting to know the people and culture. While visiting you could also visit the game companies to see if there's employment opportunities to be had.

The Kalevala isn't a particularly good place to start because it's poetry. The sentences have a certain rhythm, which is fair enough as far as literature is concerned, but it's pretty hopeless if you're interested in learning the language. The impact of Kalevala on contemporary Finnish culture isn't too significant either.

Learning Swedish because Finnish has many Swedish loanwords is, frankly, a bit stupid. It's like learning French or Latin because English has borrowed many words from those. Swedish won't get you very far in most of Finland if you're going to interact with natives, but it's not completely useless; I once spoke with the American ambassador and he told me he'd taken Swedish lessons first because practically all texts that matter in everyday life (in products, official websites and such) is available in Swedish as well, and it's the easier language to learn.

Due to historical reasons, Swedish is the second official language of Finland and it's a mandatory subject at school, but the further you get from cities and the west coast, the fewer people are capable of even basic communication in the stupid language. Helsinki is bleeding expensive to live in, or so I've heard, so living in one of the nearby areas and using public transport will be cheaper. Other places worth considering include Tampere, Turku and Oulu, which are cheaper but probably no worse to live in. I live in Turku and I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything. Generally speaking, very. It's unlike most European languages, as other people have established already. Most Finns have a decent grasp on English, so you'll do just fine in that respect.

As for alcohol, it's bleeding expensive here, as is everything else really. Not that it's stopping us, mind you; I believe Finland has the highest alcohol consumption per capita figure of Western Europe. The stereotypical Finn is something of an introvert, and so needs a drink or five to loosen up and socialize. Sober Finns usually mind their own business and don't engage in small talk with strangers, a characteristic that I have come to revere. One time I was in class in University, waiting for the last guy to turn up. There were seven of us plus the teacher, and no one said a single word for several minutes. I found this perfectly normal and not at all awkward, but the (English-born) teacher commented “you Finns are extraordinarily silent, even when you're being quiet.”

Oh, and a word of warning about public transport. Local public transit tends to work moderately well in bigger cities, but the tickets are so expensive that I ride my bicycle all year around. Long-haul travelling is so expensive that you're better off using a car of your own (despite petrol costing something like 1.65€/litre). Coaches are pretty dependable if slow, whereas trains are constantly late, delayed or broken down, especially during winter.

My first reaction to "Missä täyk?" was to think of Jar Jar Binks from Star Wars. He sounds like that in English, doesn't he?

Anyway, I'm jealous. I lived in Finland for about 6 months and I loved the place. It was in a Swedish speaking part, so I didn't really hear much Finnish, but Swedish is definitely easier to learn!

Advice, I'm not sure. I can only remember good things and maybe that isn't accurate. I would suggest you drive inter-city as much as you can. You will understand why so many rally drivers are Finnish! It is so much fun :)

This is false. Average alcohol consumption per capita is 12.52 litres per year in Finland which is good average. There are many Western/Central European countries topping that, opening poster's Germany being one of them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_alcohol_consumption

Of course you might get the impression of the consumption being much higher due to very different type of alcohol culture. 44€ for a month of unlimited use of public transportation within Helsinki area isn't too bad, to be honest. Half the price if you're a student...

If asked from a Finn to tell about this country, they will usually tell you how difficult the language is to learn (true, but not *that* hard), how much people drink (pretty average in Europe, in fact), how common it is to see drunkards on the streets (you'll see more of them in London or Norway), how introverted we are (true, but it's actually better during the summertime) and how technologically advanced we are (not true).

Finland has its ups and downs like any country. Things to note:

-Helsinki and Espoo are fairly expensive. It's not a bad idea to move a bit further off where it's considerably cheaper to live. You can commute to work by train or by bus. I live in Järvenpää which is 25 minutes from Helsinki by train, and housing is much cheaper.

-In Helsinki and surrounding area you'll find you can do well by just using English, especially if you are working in a high-tech field. Language courses exist for people moving into the country.

-Many foreigners can have the most difficulty in adjusting to the weather and the introverted people. You'll find people can be hard to get to know to, and the summer is short (2-4 months) and unpredictable.

This might be relevant to your interests: http://www.amazon.de/Finnen-von-Sinnen-finnische-heiraten/dp/3442375835/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1345399544&sr=8-1