EU official enjoys the opera and the open spaces

Relocating in Finland as a family adventure

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By Jaana Savolainen
     
      “Hey, it’s not that awful here”, says Alastair Macphail from his living-room sofa, and he gestures out into the bleak grey January drizzle.
      “You get weather like this in Brussels practically all year round”, he laughs.
      Alastair Macphail, 50, and his wife Jane, 53, relocated to Helsinki with their three children last summer.
     
Macphail is heading up the HR unit of the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) , which started work in the capital in June 2007 after the so-called REACH regulations were adopted in December 2006, following three years of fierce debate, lengthy negotiations, and intense lobbying from the chemical industry.
      His responsibilities extend to recruiting and training new staff for the Agency, which will eventually employ around 400 people by 2010.
      Macphail will not be here for that long: his work in Helsinki looks at present to continue until the end of this year.
     
“The Finnish language isn’t that impossible, either, even if learning it is a pretty hard grind, says Jane Macphail, who sits on the floor and pours tea into the cups set out on on a low sofa-table.
      Last autumn Jane took 12 hours of Finnish for foreigners courses each week.
      “After the first few lessons I was so beat that when I came home it was all I could do to crawl into bed and go to sleep”, she laughs.
     
Alastair is Scottish by birth and his wife hails from Canada. They met in Switzerland, and the family’s three children - Josephine, 15, Katie, 14, and 11-year-old Hugh - were all born in France. The family moved to Helsinki from Brussels, where they had been living for the past seven years.
      Jane sees the next question coming a mile away.
      “We’re Europeans”, she responds instantly to an inevitable enquiry as to where exactly the family regards as home.
     
The family's stay in Finland was sold to the children as an adventure.
      Thus far the only bit they have found too boring for words was the drive here through Poland and the Baltic States.
      The kids attend the Ressu Comprehensive School and the Upper Secondary School’s IB-programme, and study in English.
      “The teachers here are a lot more relaxed and friendly than in Belgium. It’s quite incredible that you can call them by their first names”, enthuses Josephine.
      She has already announced that she is not leaving Finland at any price.
     
Hugh Macphail’s first day at school in Helsinki ended on a surprising and exciting note, when the teacher dismissed the class and told him he could go home now.
      “Until then he had never once in his life walked home from school alone. In Brussels, parents pick up their kids from school right up until they are 14", his mother reports.
      “But when he had done it, he was enormously pleased with himself.”
      Although his mother was a little nervous at first, she, too, calmed down quickly enough. “The cars don’t drive so fast around here. Crossing the street is easier. And there is a lot less traffic than there is in Brussels.”
     
Jane Macphail would like to find a job in Helsinki, but she has recognised that without a decent grasp of Finnish one is on rocky ground here. She is a textile designer by training.
      Alastair is meanwhile full of praise for the City of Helsinki, which has gone to some lengths to help the new staff at ECHA with the move to Finland and with the nuts and bolts of relocating.
      “Helsinki wants to raise its international profile, and you can see it in practice.”
      The MacPhails found a rental apartment in Kruununhaka with help from the city. “It wasn’t easy to get hold of a large apartment like this to rent downtown, but we did not want to move far out from the centre. We wanted to experience Helsinki close-up.”
     
One of the most pleasant experiences has been being able to go to the Opera, which is within reasonable walking distance, and tickets do not cost an arm and a leg.
      “You can get seats for the National Opera at a sensible price - in Brussels it is quite ridiculously expensive.”, says Jane. “We’d also be happy to go to the theatre, but our Finnish isn’t up to that yet.”
     
Helsinki’s parks, recreational areas, and skating rinks also get a thumbs-up. “And the bicycle paths are wonderful”, adds Hugh.
      In Brussels, the children really had nowhere they could ride a bike.
      Alastair has also bought skis, and is looking forward eagerly to being able to use them somehwere closer than Lapland, where the family have already taken a vacation.
      In February, they will be heading east to Koli in Northern Karelia.
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 21.1.2008

More on this subject:
 Hard to find an apartment without help from the city
 Helsinki employed a relocation advisor to smooth the arrival of ECHA staff
 FACTFILE: Implementing REACH from Annankatu

JAANA SAVOLAINEN / Helsingin Sanomat
jaana.savolainen@hs.fi