Wanna just jump to the juice? Go to process

Commuting

It has been around 1 year and 8 months since I moved to the land of 40.000 lakes and thousands of islands. Finland has one of the best public transport systems in the world, notably in bigger urban centers. That means Helsinki and to some extent Tampere. Since I was not located in any of those, things generally go via bus, what is not exactly bad, but you are, natually, constrained to where bus lines pass, plus you are subject to traffic, weather (which really is something during the colder months), and the fares are quite high (3.20 euros at the time of writing), especially for a city with less than 200k inhabitants. In Helsinki you get the same ticket and you can navigate via bus, metro, tram and commuter trains, yes. That’s why Helsinki has the best public transport system. Should we make it free? More heavily subsidized? I would say yes. More taxes for cars and fossil fuels, and more public transport. But I think the taxes are already quite high.

In any case, I am not complaining, since I am lucky enough to live within a 15m walk from my work places, a 15m walk from the city center, and a 10m bike ride to the shore. During the warmest months anyway you can get the city bike membership and live happily.

Travelling

I love Europe. Europe is just the best, has so much to do and to visit. Sadly there is a plague in european airlines (i guess it’s happening world around) which are the “light tickets”. Shrinkflation, shitflation, call it whatever. The fact is that now we pay the same price for flight tickets, without any carry on even! Yay Ryanair!

The fact is: sometimes you just want to do a road trip, sometimes you just want to carry more stuff, or you’re moving, or you are visiting places that it’s more convenient by car. Time to get a license.

I felt the pain of not having an european license when I was living in Spain and could not rent a car because of my license.

License exchange process

I’ll share what I did to get mine, I hope it works for you all. The official website for dealing with license stuff in Finland is traficom.fi. Do not go anywhere else.

You need first to check what is the origin country of you license. If it’s from the EU, great! It’s cheaper! Just apply with you’re license and you’re good.

My license was not from the EU, so the process was:

1 Ask for a license exchange in the website

Go into this website. Fill in the form and book some day. It tends to be a bit crowded, so keep that in mind.

2 Receive a medical evaluation

Watch out! Avoid at all costs medical centers like Mehilainen or Terveystalo! They will charge you a fat premium for receiving their services. Ok that they have a lot of availability, but you will pay around triple the price. When I checked it was around 200 euros for a 20m remote evaluation. Absolute BS.

If you have immigrated recently, it might be a bit harder and overwhelming to find the spots. I got a recommendation from a coworker who pointed me to a place in the city center. I call them, no one is there, cause they go for vacations, probably in Malaga or Tenerife. I go and reschedule my appointment. I arrive there, the doctor charges me 70 euros to ask for my blood pressure, medications, make me read some small letters with one eye at a time and check my heart and breathing. Fine.

3 Visit ajovarma and send the documents

Bureaucracy, bureaucracy…. They will ask for your current license, ID/RP/Passport, medical evaluation, and a ✨ passport photo ✨! Who tells you that the Finnish passport photo standard is different than others? Nobody 🤗 I brough some pictures I had taken recently, and the officer said it was not in the standard so we could not proceed. However, she was kind enough to let me take some pictures quickly and go back in some time, even though the place was packed. She started the process and waited for me. I went to the photo studio, minus 15 euros 💸, but some pictures where I look badass, but they work. I take my bikes back to the place, yay, and we continue the process. Finally the officer goes back, recognizes me, gives back my documents (except for my previous license) and a paper that temporarily replaces my license.

Summary

It costed me 39 for the exchange process, 70 for the medical appointment, 15 for the pictures, and around 6 hours of my lifetime to make the exchange. It’s been a month in and I still didn’t get the physical document, but let’ see.