From Iran to Oulu: Mitra’s Insights on Life in Oulu

My name is Mitra Marofi. I hold Bach­e­lor’s and Mas­ter’s degrees in Remote Sens­ing and Geo­graph­ic Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Tehran, Iran. Before com­ing to Fin­land, I worked as a Spa­tial Data Ana­lyst. Along­side my pro­fes­sion­al back­ground, I’m also an artist—I love to paint and ded­i­cate much of my time to this pas­sion.

I moved to Oulu in May 2021 with my hus­band, who accept­ed a posi­tion at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Oulu. At first, we didn’t know much about Oulu; Fin­land is most­ly known for its cap­i­tal, Helsin­ki. But after research­ing online, we dis­cov­ered Oulu is a Nordic city with a unique cli­mate, long days and nights in sum­mer and win­ter, and plen­ty of cycling routes.

When we arrived, I was struck by the warmth and hos­pi­tal­i­ty of the peo­ple here. Even though Oulu is the largest city in north of Fin­land, it feels calm, safe, and friend­ly. It sur­prised me to see how active peo­ple are here, even when it’s below zero—people are still out run­ning and exer­cis­ing.

Com­pared to oth­er places I’ve lived, Oulu stands out for its peace­ful envi­ron­ment, wel­com­ing com­mu­ni­ty, and close­ness to nature. This lifestyle has changed me per­son­al­ly. Before Oulu, out­door activ­i­ties like hik­ing didn’t appeal to me, but now I love explor­ing the woods, swim­ming in the lakes, and camp­ing. My favorite activ­i­ties here vary by sea­son: in win­ter, watch­ing the auro­ras is unfor­get­table, and in sum­mer, I enjoy the beach and camp­ing.

Get­ting around Oulu is easy thanks to the reli­able bus sys­tem, though trav­el­ing to Helsin­ki can be a bit pricey and time-con­sum­ing. Learn­ing Finnish has been a big chal­lenge, but inte­gra­tion pro­grams have helped me man­age it. I’ve found that speak­ing Finnish is essen­tial here, espe­cial­ly with Oulu’s small size and few inter­na­tion­al com­pa­nies. While the peo­ple here are warm and friend­ly, effec­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tion often requires Finnish.

Oulu has giv­en me oppor­tu­ni­ties I might not find else­where, espe­cial­ly in bal­anc­ing work and fam­i­ly life. I’ve had a won­der­ful job expe­ri­ence at SYKE, where I start­ed as an intern and lat­er extend­ed my role for a year. The sup­port from my col­leagues made me feel like fam­i­ly, which was a very excit­ing expe­ri­ence.

One of my best mem­o­ries here has been watch­ing the north­ern lights on cold, qui­et nights in win­ter. For any­one con­sid­er­ing a move to Oulu, I rec­om­mend learn­ing Finnish and secur­ing a per­ma­nent job before­hand. The inte­gra­tion pro­grams here are also a fan­tas­tic way to start build­ing a net­work.

@mitra_marofi

@mitra_marofi_calligraphy

Text edit­ed by: Jes­si­ca Segu­ra Polo.