After people find out I’m from Finland, the most common question I get in Austin is whether I like the city. I would always answer that I loved it. The weather is so nice, the food is awesome, the street art is beautiful, there’s music everywhere.

I really do feel like Austin is right for me. Even if I had flown across the globe, there was something about Austin that made me feel like I wasn’t that far away from Helsinki. A big city but in a way that felt like it wasn’t. Weird in a decidedly good way. The blueberry in the middle of an otherwise red muffin.

“I wish it wasn’t built for cars though,” I would sometimes add after heaping enough praise on my companion interested to hear whether I liked the place they called home or not.