From Slo­va­kia to Fin­land: The Expe­ri­ence of Tomas Sle­sar in Oulu

Tomas Sle­sar, a 37-year-old Slo­va­kian native, has been liv­ing in Oulu for 14 years. He moved here from Ger­many with his wife and togeth­er they have three kids.

Com­ing from the north­ern parts of Slo­va­kia, Tomas Sle­sar found him­self grap­pling with the unfa­mil­iar­i­ty of Finnish sum­mers and how the sun nev­er went down and strug­gled with sleep­ing at first. How­ev­er, as time passed, he adapt­ed to the Finnish weath­er and found it easy to inte­grate with the cul­ture and peo­ple.

Tomas’ deci­sion to relo­cate to Oulu was great­ly influ­enced by fam­i­ly con­nec­tions, since his wife’s sis­ter was already liv­ing in Oulu. Upon his arrival, Tomas enrolled in account­ing and finance cours­es at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Oulu. Ini­tial­ly, he was tak­en aback be the dif­fer­ences in cli­mate and lifestyle com­pared to his pre­vi­ous home, but he found com­fort in the wel­com­ing nature of the Finnish peo­ple.

Pro­fes­sion­al­ly, Tomas spent eight years with Trakker Oy, where he was respon­si­ble for sales oper­a­tions out­side the Nordic region. Cur­rent­ly he works at Euro­hunt, as a Sales Man­ag­er for the Nordics, where he enjoys the flex­i­bil­i­ty of work­ing remote­ly from home with occa­sion­al work trips to vis­it clients.

Tran­si­tion­ing into the Finnish work cul­ture, char­ac­ter­ized by a bal­ance of free­dom and respon­si­bil­i­ty, was a big con­trast com­pared to the work­ing cul­ture in Slo­va­kia, Tomas said. For Tomas, the Finnish empha­sis on work-life bal­ance was a rev­e­la­tion. The flex­i­bil­i­ty to pri­or­i­tize fam­i­ly com­mit­ments, such as pick­ing up his chil­dren from school, shows the sup­port­ive envi­ron­ment fos­tered by Finnish com­pa­nies.

Tomas described the work­ing cul­ture in Fin­land feels like a par­adise com­pared to East­ern Europe. Once the job is com­plet­ed, there’s no expec­ta­tion of work­ing after hours, grant­i­ng indi­vid­u­als greater free­dom. How­ev­er, he not­ed that this free­dom also brings a height­ened sense of respon­si­bil­i­ty to per­form effi­cient­ly.

In con­trast to the hier­ar­chi­cal struc­tures preva­lent in East­ern Euro­pean work­places, Tomas high­light­ed that in Fin­land, there’s a sense of equal­i­ty where every­one oper­ates on the same lev­el, regard­less of their posi­tion.

“Oulu is a place where hard work meets a high qual­i­ty of life.”

Through­out his time in Oulu, Tomas trea­sures the friend­ships cul­ti­vat­ed with his Finnish col­leagues, over­com­ing ini­tial lan­guage bar­ri­ers to deep­en con­nec­tions that enhanced both his per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al life. Despite encoun­ter­ing hur­dles like adapt­ing to the Finnish weath­er and pro­longed snow­fall, Tomas embraces the Finnish way of life, view­ing know­ing the Finnish lan­guage as a sig­nif­i­cant mile­stone that improved his liv­ing expe­ri­ence and assist­ed him with a smoother inte­gra­tion into the com­mu­ni­ty.

Reflect­ing on his jour­ney, Tomas empha­sizes the wel­com­ing nature of the Finnish peo­ple, no one try­ing to be bet­ter than the oth­er and the city’s over­all expe­ri­ence as his favorite aspects. He believes that Oulu’s econ­o­my is on an upward tra­jec­to­ry and advo­cates for com­pa­nies to embrace inter­na­tion­al tal­ent, view­ing diver­si­ty as a source of inno­va­tion rather than a threat.

Tomas also encour­ages prospec­tive expa­tri­ates to approach their con­sid­er­a­tion to cre­ate a life in Fin­land with an open mind. Learn­ing the lan­guage is impor­tant, immers­ing one­self in the cul­ture and com­ing for a vis­it, and appre­ci­at­ing the robust sup­port sys­tems for fam­i­lies do help for a suc­cess­ful tran­si­tion to life in Oulu.

In Tomas’ eyes, Oulu rep­re­sents more than just a city — it’s a place where hard work meets a high qual­i­ty of life, espe­cial­ly com­pared to Slo­va­kia, where indi­vid­u­als are val­ued for what they con­tribute to soci­ety.

Text: Adri­an Canales