Ease of living

How did a professor of dentistry end up moving from Middle of Europe to Middle of (K)nowhere? And does he think living is easy here? Let Szabolcs Felszeghy tell.

Szabolcs Felszeghy moved with his family to Kuopio from Hungary few years ago. He works at the University of Eastern Finland and writes his thoughts of Finland and Finnishness to his blog through the eyes of an immigrant.

How you ended up to Kuopio?

I first met Savonians in 1998 and discovered that they are awesome and loved everything I learned about the country during my first three months stay as PhD students at Prof. Heikki Helminen`s Anatomy Department.

In 2015 I found out that a senior researcher position at University of Eastern Finland was open. I applied for the position and got the place. I moved here with my family and after two years in 2018 we decided to stay awhile, as we were falling ever more in love with the Kuopio, nature and in general Finland. And now we have our third babygirl born to be real Savonian.

Do you think living is easy in Kuopio?

Generally, YES, it is, but you should be punctual. Being on time is not only something Savonian like, but it is also expected of everyone. Being on time is their way of telling you they value you.

Otherwise, I think we have here a great choice of entertainment, good food, music, sports and culture. Kuopio has a lot of surrounding nature and we all know mother nature doesn’t charge an entrance fee… This is the easiness of the life here and the local government has made it easy to enjoy Kuopio`s nature by developing bike, cross country network, opening new public beaches for free and many more.

Although we are in the middle of (K)nowhere with less than 200 000 inhabitants, Kuopio is an extremely beautiful city embedded in Nature and start to be more and more multicultural too.