Thank you for all the welcomes as well as the parrot.
are there many Muslims in the part of Finland where you live? Are there any Mosques? Are they well integrated into mainstream society?
I live in Espoo which is part of the Helsinki metropolitan area so it is the area with most muslims in this country. Mostly they are immigrants, refugees specifically, from Somalia, Serbia (Albanians), Turkey and Iraq (kurds). There are quite a few mosques, I think over ten in the area (three cities and a town, about a million inhabitants), but you wouldn't recognize them as mosques from the outside. They are old residences, cinemas or whatever that have been transformed to mosques. So I suppose they aren't actually mosques but just prayer halls. There's only one actual mosque with a minaret in Finland in Järvenpää which is near here, but not part of the metropolitan area. Some of them are, some of them aren't. It's not the religion I think, but more the culture that makes some of them reluctant to integrate. The men usually look and dress very western, but a lot of the women, especially Somalis, wear the hijab and long skirts and generally stick out more. I've seen burkhas once or twice in my life, but that was years ago and I do live in a cheap neighborhood with the highest percentage of immigrants in Espoo. Other muslims are very well integrated, but they've been here longer like the first muslims here, Tatars. First ones came in the 19th century and they still run an exclusive islamic congregation. They're the ones who built and own the mosque in Järvenpää. They do not allow anyone of non-Tatar ethnicity to join them though. So as integrated as they are, they are still separate.
Welome, although I must warn you that we have certain members here who are satan reincarnates. You might not know Naery's yet but she is one of them
Ah yeah, I have been warned about her before. I'll keep a close eye on her.
Let us know how Finland is.
Are there a lot of Hott guys there?
Well, Finland is cold and dreary right now. Just suffered through our coldest, snowiest winter in decades. As for hot guys, well, if you like the tall, blond and blue-eyed, I suppose. I don't really look at them that much in that way.
Topic: Greetings and salutations.