Weird But GENIUS Things In FINNISH STUDENT APARTMENTS

in this video i will show you a couple of weird but still awesome things about finnish homes and specifically finnish student departments what's up guys and welcome back to the channel if this is the first time we are meeting my name is oliver and i'm a master student in economics at aldo university here in finland and on this channel we'll talk about education and early career development specifically here in finland so if you are new here do consider subscribing so while the example in this video is a student apartment many of the things that i'm going to show in this video actually apply to finnish homes in general especially when we're talking about more modern and new buildings anyways let's go check them out [Music] all right so the first thing about finnish homes that a lot of international people wonder about are actually the windows so in finland basically every single building has at least double glazing while some might even have triple glazing meaning that you have at least two or three window panes in the window itself for example here we have two different window panes insulating the room from outside so the biggest reason here is actually insulation because in the winter when it's really cold the double glazing makes sure that our homes stay warm however in addition to the heat insulation as you can actually hear the double glazing also works as really good sound insulation meaning that with a good set of double windows you can actually barely hear the sound from the street below if we actually test this for an example the window is open and the window is closed so actually a similar thing is happening with our doors as well so it's really common in finnish apartment buildings to actually have double doors uh the light is absolutely terrible but so it's normal to have double doors again not only do does this help with the heat insulation but more importantly this actually helps with sound proofing the apartment and this makes a huge difference when you think about voices coming from the corridor inside to your apartment second thing actually a funny thing that i heard from an international friend of mine about the double doors is that actually that also prevents people from peeking through the mail mail slots or boxes that we have uh that is actually something that he said that he really likes because in their home country that is actually possible to peek through but yeah so double doors basically and the second thing that you really need to understand about the doors in finland how they work is the locks how the locks work and i know that this might sound really funny but i've heard way too many stories of internationals especially students getting locked outside of their apartments because they did not know about this so in finland when you actually close a door behind you the door actually locks itself so you don't have to turn or you actually cannot in some cases turn a key to actually lock the door rather the door will automatically lock behind you so it's really important to have your keys with you every time you leave the apartment and close the door behind you so while we're talking about doors and locks it's also good to mention what kind of keys we actually use in finland so this only applies to buildings that have these modern electric locks however for example in this building we use these kind of smart electric keys that are really really cool so how these work is that these are actually coded to work with specific doors in your building so you basically need just one key for all the different doors that you you can actually have access to so also how this works is that when you actually move out from your apartment you will return the key to your landlord who will then repurpose by recoding the key to work for the next tenant but yeah this is really cool because you basically just need one key for the entire building instead of you know having one for the outer door for your own door then one for the storage room etc so yeah these are awesome all right so the next thing applies specifically to a lot of student apartments in finland and that is that most student apartments actually do not have a dishwasher pre-installed in my experience only large shared student apartments might have a dishwasher but in general this is very rare so if you really don't want to wash your dishes by hand you have to buy a dishwasher yourself and actually talking about this an additional note that applies to all apartments in finland is that if you buy a dishwasher you also have to hire a professional plumber to install it in your apartment so why this is so important is that if you install the machine yourself and it leaks your insurance company will not cover any of the damages caused by the leaking so do you know that appliance stores usually sell the installation as an additional service and it costs like 20 to 50 euros depending on the store so i really recommend that you don't skimp here but simply pay the extra money for the delivery and installation so that you don't have to worry about this at all so because a lot of apartments especially you know student apartments don't have dishwashers we of course have to wash our dishes by hand and because of course you don't want to have all of your dishes drying on the counter because it's all messy and yucky basically this finish invention saves all the trouble so basically what this is is a drying rack for your dishes and this is something that basically every single finnish household has pre-installed in their kitchens the way this simply works is that you have the dishes drying here in the cabinet outside out of mind and the water will drip directly into the sink making everything much more tidier and nicer compared to if you had actually all the dishes drying here on the counter and spreading the water all over the place all right next let's actually move into the washing room and check out what kind of things we have there in normal finished households so in finland it's actually quite normal for people not to buy a drying machine in addition to their washing machines so unless you have a large apartment with a very large bathroom or a dedicated laundry room a lot of the times we don't actually have enough space here to have a tower installed rather people usually air dry their clothes using drying racks so these kind of drying racks are super common in finnish households and while they do take a bit of space and it takes a bit of manual work to to set everything to dry these actually have some really cool benefits to them as well the best of them being that drying like this actually expands the lifespan of your clothes because this is much more delicate than for example speeding your clothes in a dryer you know hundreds and hundreds of times so talking about laundry the next awesome thing about finnish apartment buildings is the growing use of shared laundry rooms so using a common laundry room has its pros and cons first this naturally saves you quite a bit of money because you don't have to buy a washing machine nor a dryer because these laundry rooms usually have dedicated dryers that you can use second this will naturally save you some money in water and electricity costs because of the cost of the laundry rooms is already taken into account in your rent finally using a common laundry room naturally saves quite a bit of space in your apartment however there are also a couple of cons about these common spaces as well first of all if you have a very sensitive skin and you can't use any kind of softeners or scented detergents using these common laundry machines might actually not be suitable this is because they are used by a lot of people in your building and there is always some residue left from other people's detergents and that might actually become a problem if you have a very sensitive skin a second con would of course be that you can't wash your clothes whenever you want because you have to first reserve a machine for a certain time slot and those might not always be available when you need them anyways for the next thing we need to take the elevator upstairs [Music] all right so the next thing on this list is something super important and it's something that you can find in every single finnish apartment building and that is of course the sauna [Music] so saunas are a super important part of the finnish culture and we have almost 2 million saunas for a population of about 5.3 million people so the basic concept of sauna is super simple so all saunas have a basket of rocks that are heated by a wooden or in this case an electric stove when you throw water on top of the warm rocks you increase the humidity in the room and this is what we call lulu and the steam that this generates increases the feeling of heat and it makes you sweat this also makes you feel extremely relaxed and it's almost like a purifying experience so again as with many other things on this list how and where a sauna in your building has been built depends on the age of the building in many old buildings especially in the city saunas are usually built in the underground areas and many of them actually double as bomb shelters however what i think is awesome is that in many modern buildings like this one we have the sauna on the rooftop just like this so this is actually brilliant because not only do you get a terrace where you can actually cool off between lulu but the atmosphere is just out of this world and of course this also functions as a great terrace during the summer so before any fiends watching this start writing angry comments about this being an expensive area and that rooftop saunas are still rare yes that is true the area where this student building resides is pretty much brand new but it also represents a new way of building and utilizing space and these kind of facilities are built more all the time again how this works is that we basically have the sound behind these windows and then we have this awesome massive rooftop terrace where we can actually come and cool off between load before we continue to the next section of this video let me just stop for a second to thank hoas for their continuous support with this channel so huas or the foundation for student housing in the helsinki region is a non-profit foundation that rents builds and maintains housing for students in the helsingi metropolitan area i've been living in their apartments throughout my studies and i really recommend that you apply for one of their almost 10 000 student apartments in the hills in the region more information about hwas and their apartments through the links in the description box below alright so the next thing i want to talk about is that in finland we like to recycle as much as we can in older and say normal apartment buildings you would have different recycling bins at minimum for mixed bio cardboard glass and metal however nowadays it's also really common that apartment buildings also separate their plastics as many buildings have a separate bin for those as well so normally you would have a kind of a shed where you have all the waste bins together however we live in a new residential area that has been built only after 2012 and this area is actually a testing ground for this really cool new waste disposal system called this entire massive residential area uses these kind of pipes that you can use to recycle all your trash so these pipes actually have suction and they lead to a single centralized waste processing space where the garbage truck goes to collect them this means that we have no bins meaning that the yards are much cleaner and we don't have any problems with overflowing vents because a truck is laid or something like that so this is really cool and it's already implemented in a multiple new residential areas in the helsinki region also since these pipes and bins that you would normally have do not necessarily have individual units for things like glass metal or large waste many residential areas also have these separate recycling containers where you can drop off most of the things that you cannot recycle or dispose in your building itself also since none of these collection bins or containers have bins for hazardous materials like batteries nail polish bottles or similar items there are separate recycling systems for them as well for example it is pretty common nowadays that electronic stores have a recycling service where you can simply drop off your old electronics without any charge and they will take care of the recycling for you [Music] so most apartment buildings in finland have what we call hakki varasta that you could roughly translate as cage storage so what this means is that we have these small storage spaces that each household has and where you can store basically whatever you want still a couple of things to keep in mind first you need to get your own lock into the doors and second these cages very rarely have electric sockets so you cannot have anything that needs to draw electricity in these spaces so many older buildings in finland have these storage rooms underground or at the attic so usually if the storage is in the attic these spaces are actually not heated so you need to take that into account when you think about what kind of things you want to store here however more and more of the new buildings in finland have these storage spaces on the street level which is great because it's really convenient when you for example move in or out because the door opens directly to the street where you can pack the car or for example a van all right so the next awesome thing is actually behind this door and as you can see from the icon this is actually a bicycle storage again as with the previous storage rooms these bicycle storage rooms have traditional beam builds underground so that they don't take any of the expensive ground level space that could be occupied for example by a cafe or something else however nowadays we see more and more of these on the street level which again is awesome because it makes using this space and your bicycle super easy these storage spaces are great not only because you can store your bike inside during the winter but also because it's a great way to store your more expensive bikes inside preventing them from being stolen from the street yeah so as you can see there are a lot of really cool but maybe weird things that we do in finland especially with newer and more modern apartment buildings i know that these are still pretty rare and not all buildings are like this so i'd love to hear about your experience with finnish homes personally what do you find interesting or odd about finnish homes and which of these solutions would you like to see in your home country next up i recommend that you watch this video and go through this entire playlist where i talk about things that you need to know about finland thanks again for watching guys and i will see you in the next one bye bye

Channel: Road to Finnish

Views: 872,918

Keywords: weird but genius things about finnish homes, weird but genius things about finnish apartments, finnish homes, student apartment finland, student apartments helsinki, student flat finland, student accommodation finland, study in finland, study in finland for international students, is finland good for international students, how much does it cost to study in finland for international students, hoas, hoas apartments, hoas helsinki, apartment helsinki, student life in finland

Id: yiNQq_f_LzA

Length: 15min 1sec (901 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 29 2020