We first met in summer 1984.Lissu was with a finnish church group visiting Germany for a week; as the Pastor from Forsbach (where I lived with my parents) and Kulosaari (where she lived with her parents) were friends, they visited Forsbach for some days. I was helping and guiding in some issues, and so we met and started to talk. We talked for almost 3 days (and nights), and thought that we found really good friendship. After her return to Finland we continued to write letters for a few months, but then somehow stopped. (There was no Internet or SMS at that time)
Then we made our separate ways for many years, both being married and having kids (I have 3, she has 7) , both going through good and bad times;
Lissu started to study Business Administration, and in 2003 got an offer to visit Germany again for a week. When she had decided to take part in that, she remembered my former home adress (by heart after 19 years) and wrote that she would be coming. And of course I immediatly knew who could have written to me from Finland. We changed some mails and made an appointment to meet for an afternoon in Rastatt, where her school made the visit.
On 29/09/03 we met and continued our intense way to talk just like the 19 years would have been one day. After 10 hours we knew a lot about each others lifes, and we could see that we both were quite badly crushed and desperate in our current situations.It was only when I drove home after our meeting I understood, that this was not a "good friendship". Same for Lissu and me, we were totally struck by the discovery of LOVE. We had not known, and we had not expected anything like this.
Then followed a very exhausting time of mails, calls, millions of text messages and untameable emotions. We tried to re-establish something like friendship (we slowly realized that we never had been "friends"), we tried to fight for our marriages and against breaking our current families.
After 6 or 8 months we started to accept that this wouldn't work.
So we both had to make cruel and tough decisions, and went through very unpleasent divorce processes - for us, but of course also for our families. Yet there was also understanding from people close to us, many could see that we both had been totally crushed and that something new broke its way.
We had not met for more than a year, but then found some opportunities to meet again. First for just a few hours, then for some days early in 2005.In the summer of 2005 Lissu worked as an intern at AXA Tech for some months, living with me and also bringing some of her kids to my small appartment, where I was then living with my oldest son. We worked together on her thesis, which covered topics about service quality and culture, being important for both of us.
After many flights back and forth between Germany and Finland, Lissu finally moved in summer 2006 to Germany with 4 of her kids to live with my son and me in Bergisch Gladbach.
Since then we were working on many practical integration topics, Lissu went to 6 months language training (which brought lots of great international friends), and each of the kids had to face their own difficulties with the german school system. Actually the school was the domain that we had grossly underestimated. It is public knowledge from Pisa and OECD reports today, that the german school system as a whole is not overwhelming, and that it is especially bad when it comes to integrate migrants or any kids whose parents cannot help out with many things. We made some really awful (unbelievable) experiences with schools and teachers, but also found some to be very engaged. Yet, all good attitudes from single persons won't change a system.
The year 2007 was the worst roller coaster I had seen so far in my life - besides major worries with the schools, life threatning sickness, and many other troubles, we also saw great evolutions with new friends and also with our kids. And: we legally got married, which also had been a surprisingly difficult project.In 2008 her oldest daughter switched back to the finnish school system, doing that as remote / internet based courses. At easter we were visiting a finnish school to investigate options for the second oldest son (of the kids who moved to Germany) - it seemed just so much better for him to return to the finnish system. We then faced the question, if we would send the kids (one by one) back to Finland, or if we all would go.
After many hours of intense discussions between us and friends, we decided to give it a try. One major prerequesite would be for me to find an equivalent job in Finland, which didn't look at all easy.
I worked for 2 days on my resume (see LinkedIn), filed it to the Nokia career pages and got a call the next day. Nokia was just building a new enterprise architecture function, and they were strongly interested. I had an interview in London after 3 weeks, and an assessment in Helsinki another 2 weeks later. It took a total of 10 weeks from the first thought to me writing my termination letter to AXA. As my current job role at AXA had forced me to hand over all direct staff responsibilities to other departments, and also I didn't lead any huge projects, I could organize a very quick "run-off" period, that will conclude before mid June. The 11/06/08 will be my first official day at Nokia in Helsinki; we're pushing forward to clarify all terms of our relocation, finding schools and an appartment to live, and the current plan is to move with the family by end of August. Funny enough, it is quite likely that at least two kids will go to Deutsche Schule Helsinki, which is giving many lessons in german, but mainly follows the finnish structures and styles for schooling.
As if these plans were not enough for this summer, we also had planned since months to have a week of (wedding) festivities in Virrat, Finland, where we'll be together with many friends and family members to enjoy fellowship and nature. This of course also needs some more preparations - and is another event to look forward too.