Sep 22
Leftovers
I’ve finally finished processing the pictures from my trip. Some of them worked out better than I expected, and some turned out to be not as good as I had hoped for. An acceptable average! The pictures in this blog post are not related to the text, other than that everything is related to my vacation trip.
As a Finn living in Sweden, it’s inevitable to make comparisons between the countries. As it’s been 15 years since I moved from Finland, a lot has changed and in many ways the country is not the same as the one I remember. 
So now when I visit, I can look at Finland with the eyes of a tourist and some of the things I’ve seen are quite surprising. The following “comparison” is very subjective and based on a limited sample (northern Sweden, central/eastern Finland), and even if I keep saying that this or that is better in the other, please do not count the votes in either direction. All in all, I’m happy to be a Finn and I’m happy to live in Sweden so I wouldn’t seriously complain about either!
- Roads are better in Finland. Much better. Much, much better! *
- There are more people in Finland. In Sweden you can drive 50km with hardly any signs of human activity. Apart from the road, obviously.
In Finland you always see something, if nothing else then speed cameras (see the point below). - There are more speed cameras in Finland (a lot more – I didn’t see any from Gäddede to Haparanda, but in Finland I lost the count of them by Oulu).
- There is more birch forest in Finland.
- Finland is flat. I was relieved to reach the inner country because the flatlands in near the coast were driving me crazy. It’s unnatural not to have any hills.
- There are more lakes in Sweden. Finland is supposed to be “the land of thousand lakes” but there was very little water in sight. The roadside scenery in Sweden on the other hand is dotted with lakes, creeks and wetlands.
- Commercial (pop) radio is better in Finland. My car radio picked up Radio Nova before Haparanda and never had to re-tune during the trip. Is there a law in Sweden that forbids commercial radio to broadcast outside urban areas? I’d be fooled to think so because the signal fades as soon as you leave any major city.
- There are more bypass roads in Finland. You hardly ever need to drive through a town or a village. Until you come to Savonlinna, of course!
* * *
* Swedish roads. I imagine a Vägverket boss say something like this:
“Hi Sven, we need to patch up the Loos road. Why don’t you take this coin and toss it to see which holes to fix? And Sven, take care to do a sloppy job at it so we can go there next year and patch the same holes all over again.”
Now, it’s possible that the work order isn’t exactly like that. But the result sure is! I can understand that they don’t have the money to fix the whole road, but instead of fixing all of it badly, why not use the little money they have to fix one part of the road well? And then next year, fix the next hole. And then next. Instead of coming there every year and fill a hole there and a hole here and not even bother to even out the tarmac for a smooth surface. So the car jolts over the new tarmac edges instead of the hole that used to be there. Same difference, just money wasted.
The same thing applies for a lot of other roads. The Loos road is small, but I know a lot of highways which are only marginally better than the Loos road.
10 comments
First of all, nice pics, but would like to see the panoramas a tad bigger…
Quality of roads, eh? If I remember correctly, the cabin you visited in Finland is in same area as certain member of Finnish member of parliament has his, which just may explain why the road there does not suck (any more, it used to before this dude got into his current position)
Typically, I don’t listen to radio myself, but at least I can agree on the reception issue. Either it is due to landscape formation or a law limiting the sending power, who knows.
Haha, yes that particular road is probably better than you’d expect on the countryside… But I was also referring to all the other roads, and even roadworks – in Finland when they work on a road, they pave the temporary bypass around the construction site. In Sweden when I drove the E45 and there was construction work, the temporary bypass so bad that the cars were crawling it at 10 kph. I’m used to the bumpy roads by now so I’ve no problem with them as such… but it was a real eye-opener to see how the Finnish roads were consistently in such a good shape. Can’t the Swedes build them better, or do they just not want to? Is it a “poor north”/”rich south” issue?
As for the panoramas, yes I probably underestimated the size. I want the picture to show without scrolling but I guess most people have bigger resolution than 800 by now…
Well, maybe you are indeed right. Somehow I got the feeling here in general that what ever you ask, the answer tends to be “snart, snart, svårt, svårt,” or probably more like “nästa veckan då”.
Like the Spanish “manaña”… all we need is a siesta.
I remember a study which compared the decision process in different cultures. The crucial difference between Sweden and Finland is that Sweden is so ultra-democratic that they can’t make a decision without asking everybody’s opinion first, so changes will take time. In Finland on the other hand, they rely on authority so the manager can make quick decisions without polling for opinions. Would Nokia be where it is now if the leadership culture was different in Finland?
There are pros and cons to both cultures, but being a typical Finn, I am sometimes frustrated to wait while everybody debates on what to do… they almost need to take a vote on where to eat lunch.
Oh, so you mean I am not the only one getting slightly infuriated because of the Swedish mentality? Whau, what a relieve
(actually, what drives me nuts even more is that they are totally incapable of understanding that some people could see their doings wrong)
Well, I’m still here, so I guess it’s still not that bad after all…
Yes I think I also need to add that although my comments seem to put Swedes at a disadvantage, it’s not intended as negative critique at all. Like Miika said, if I didn’t like it here, I’d be moving out – and I have no intentions of doing it!
It’s just fun sometimes to point out some differences. 
First two pictures are very nice! Would love to see those panoramas bigger though
Swedish roads are generally in real bad shape up north, but if the situation is the same in middle parts..oh noes :/ I always try to avoid driving in Sweden when I’m having my vacation and being in Lapland, so bad are the roads. I quess you drove the highway 8 for some kilometers, because you made a point in flatness. The route via central Finland is much better scenery-wise.
I uploaded bigger versions of the panoramas, hope that the detail shows better now.
Much better, ty
Oh yes, that makes the difference! Much better now! I can only love the composition on the last one, but once more…it is just so flat! (mind you, nothing wrong with the picture, only the viewer
)