So here are some noteworthy things we encountered so far in no particular order
A lot of the people here, especially the university bureaucrats, are very friendly. When we arrived and went to get our keys for the apartment the room was full of people and it was like 30 minutes bevor closing – still the lady handing us our keys did a friendly smalltalk with us and made some jokes about how unusal it is for many foreigners that both man and women have to sign the tenancy agreement.
You might think that Germany is efficent but…:
When we arrived we decided to rent a parking space for our car in front of the building. Which we could do online in literaly 1 minute. (You also book the washing machine and the sauna online. pretty cool.)
In the canteen every cashier serves two lanes, which works perfectly fine. They are even friendly.
In the students office they use an intranet chat to contact other offices quickly – and it works.
When you write someone an email you usually get an answer in a few hours.
Coffee
It is everywere. And I mean everywhere. There are places in the university from which you can see at least 4 places in the same building that are less then 10 m away where they sell coffee. You go into a second hand clothing store, first thing you see is a coffee machine. In the tee kitchen of my department there is a dripcoffee maker with two coffeepots, a fully automatic machine (a very big one) and to top it of: a coffee grinder and an italien style expresso maker (and the brazillians really know how to use this thing). The good thing is that they use so much coffee here that they do not need to roast so dark to make it seam like it is fresh, it is fresh. Which means the coffee is generally less bitter and more tasty.
Trust
This is something that amazes me. There are hat stands (things to hang your jackets on) in the university, in the hallway and in the main halls – nothing unusal. Amazing is though, that people use them. They need no lockers and there aren‘t any.
In the canteen they serve a buffet. You get plenty, main meal, salad, something to drink, bread and butter. There is a limit to certain things, like pieces of meat and slices of bread, you can take but no one will weigh your salad or count your potatoes. And you know what? People just take as much as they need.
Food
People drink Milk here for lunch. There are even like 4 different types, fat, low fat, fatfree, soja.
There is home-brewed beer in the canteen. But it has no alcohol. And is very sugary.
While you can buy frozen things in super small one portion packes cheese is usually available only in super big packages.
The salmon is just awesome.
Architecture/Infrastructure
We have 100 Mbit internet (not synchonous sadly) for 10€. Ok that might be due to the fact we have a student appartment but I don‘t think so.
Everything here is more broad, flat and spaceious – it feels a bit like you are in an american road movie. You even have very nice diner like resturants on the side of the roads and you can buy burgers everywhere.
The center of Oulu is more or less boring but it has some very nice corners.
The university is very confusing at first which is due to two facts: first of all it is colorful! Second you can go anywhere without going outside – which makes much sense in the winter, I guess, but it makes orientate oneself not easier.
Nature
It is beautiful. Full stop.
So here are some fotos: