You can go your own way
Three years ago I was studying at wilderness guide school Outdoor Academy. We had a day off sea kayaking at Lofoten Islands. I sat on one a hill and looked at the sea in sunshine. One month earlier I had said good bye for my colleges at the newspaper Lapin Kansa in Rovaniemi, north Finland. I had spent 8 years working with them as a sport journalist. Now I was a second-year wilderness guide student, without job, without home and had no clue where I would end up when my studies will end in May 2016. A song in the Outdoor Academy promotion video was an old rock classic “You can go your own way”. That idea had brought me this far and I thought that I should keep going my own way.
Two years ago, I sat in Stockholm besides a good studying friend of mine Sanna. She had worked the winter before in Norway in Geilo and I waited for a phone call of the boss of the same Ski School. After the phone call I knew that I had got a work place at the ski school for the becoming season. Of Geilo I didn’t know much. Google maps showed that nearby the staff house would be an Esso.
We went kayaking with Sanna and laughed a lot in the sunshine at the one of the very last warm days at Stockholm archipelago. In the evening we sat a tent by one beach and 6 a clock in the morning I picked up my boyfriend Antti from Arlanda airport. We headed to Trysil for another two interviews and Antti kept driving to Geilo the next day for his interview as massage therapist at Vestlia Spa. The next day Antti gave a call and said: “I got this job in Geilo. The place looks more Norway than Trysil. Should we move here?”
Now we have been living in Geilo, Norway for two years. I turned 40 this summer and we also got married after 3 years of dating. As said life can surprise you sometimes in also in positive ways.
Photo: Tanja Lähteenmäki
How do I feel now?
I’m very pleased of my job at Slaatta Ski Center, Geilo Ski School. Even though I never planned to work as professional ski instructor I had started that career in a way already 1998 by taking the first alpine ski instructor course. Last winter I took the level 4 course in Hemsedal and snowboarding course in Finland. It’s been a long way, but I have been super happy to work outdoors these two winters. Teaching people to ski alpine, telemark, cross country and snowboarding and take some short snowshoe trips. I really enjoy the international staff as well having instructors from Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Netherlands, France and England.
The only bad thing of working as ski instructor is that the work season is only 4 months (mid December to mid April) long. Then you need to figure out where you can find a job for the other 8 months of the year. I have been lucky to find something, by fixing bikes at Rallarvegen Bikerental and working for the Hol community to help old people and clean their houses. We have also got some guiding business going on in the summer time, but there is lot to do to get it pay back for real.
I’m also very pleased that my Norwegian is getting better even though I still struggle daily with the language and I sometimes truly miss working with my home language, finish. Besides using it at home with my husband nobody speaks finish in here. Sometimes I also miss writing good articles, but so far it has felt pretty hard to work here as a free lance journalist writing in Finnish.
When we moved to Geilo I was scared to move into such a little village with only 3500 inhabitants. After two years living in the countryside it feels weird to look at many people at the same time in bigger cities and we still talk about cities like Oslo, Bergen and Helsinki. A line at supermarket is a busy hour in Geilo and the only time it really gets busy in here is Easter when the village actually gets 30 000 inhabitants with all the people who come to their cabins. After Easter the village feels like a little ghost town. In Geilo there’s no need for having clothes like jeans. Nobody wears those. You can have a took year a round (except this summer being really warm) and hiking boots and trousers are the local fashion.
The season for winter boots in mountain biking started yesterday and there’s already snow on the mountain tops.
As a local you do not eat or drink outside of your home. It’s way too expensive. You also plan your grocery shopping by what happens to be on sale. Like all the Finns living abroad I miss the Finnish chocolate Fazer blue and Karelian pasty. And the colder the weather gets, the more I miss sauna.
Many people ask us are we going to stay in Geilo. Antti has a good answer for that. He always says, that so far, we haven’t decided to move away from here. Still there are no long-time future plans. Once you take a mountain bike ride on the local trails, life feels pretty good. And having a jump session on bike parks dirt jumps actively makes you forget your age being 40. You will remember it the day after though.
