"You found my new home!" a Oulu Travel Page by gubbi1

Welcome to the page of my new home...

I arrived in Oulu to participate in a workforce exchange for a year in our 'new' company Nokia Siemens Networks. After a few days in a hotel I am now lucky to rent an apartment very close to the very center of the town. It is just 5 minutes to walk from my home to the start of the pedestrian zone and two minutes to the water front. Such a luck I had... The first weeks in Oulu I have started to discover my new 'territory'. I really enjoy it :) But now some words about the town...

Oulu is located a two-hours drive south of the polar circle. In former times Oulu has been wellknown for its tar production, which served Europes sailing fleets to prosper. Tar was used to fill the gaps between the wood to avoid water to come into the ships body. The tar was produced in the inland and then transported on the Oulujoki to Oulu from where it was exported. Nowadays it is IT, which keeps Oulu to be one of Finlands important towns. With the Nokia R&D and production (now partly Nokia Siemens Networks) a lot of smaller companies were drawn here into the north. Now also other companies like Polar (producing e.g. heartrate watches for sportsmen) and Stora Enso (paper factory) have settled here. Oulu has become the sixth largest town in Finland since Oulu was founded in 1605 by King Karl IX of Sweden. It now accomodates about 130000 inhabitants.

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I started to place stuff also on the pages of destinations inside Oulu, it can happen that things placed there are not excatly in the location but nearby.
The destinations are currently:
-> Oulunsuu

For interesting things in the surrounding towns, which are good for a daytrip, you will find tips in the tipps section of Oulu.

For more tips, which are related the whole of Finland, check out the Finland section!!!

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