The forest in the immigrant enclave
There's one area of Turku that, when we were making plans to move here, all the locals mentioned to us as a possible place to avoid living. They were all very nice about it, but from multiple sources, we got the picture that this area of Turku was full of foreigners and (or therefore?)...unsafe? Run-down? Undesirable? All of a sudden I can't remember the exact words people used at the time, but that's the impression we got. Again, everyone was very polite and discreet about how they described this area, with many of them saying that they had friends who lived there, or family, or they had once lived there themselves, and rent there was inexpensive, but. But.
I didn't know exactly what kind of horrible neighborhood to expect when I arrived here and visited that part of town, but it certainly was not the leafy, quiet enclave I found it to be. I almost laughed, thinking of what an "undesirable" part of town looked like in Tucson, for example, and what it looked like in Turku. There were tidy apartment buildings and cozy row houses and a forest running through it all.
But there were also a lot of women wearing hijabs and other evidence of recent immigrants to this country. The main shopping center there has shops catering to exotic cuisines. I went to a neighborhood celebration there a few months ago for International Women's Day and traditional henna was on offer. There are far more children running around in that area than elsewhere in Turku, and more of them are brown than elsewhere in Turku.
There is so much I don't understand about this area of town that for now, I just find it interesting. I find it interesting that it has a reputation - that the locals talk about it all in the same way but also seem to realize it's not a real trouble spot, not like many other European cities have (for whatever reason). I don't know why there are so many immigrant families living in that one area. I don't fully understand the locals' view of these immigrants. I mean, I have spent almost seven years living in Muslim-majority countries, and when I see a pre-pubescent girl here wearing hijab (and I see it far, far more often than I ever have in any Muslim country), it even makes me flinch. So I can imagine that it's disquieting for the average Finn.
But like I said, I don't understand it. So it's just interesting.
