Carlotta Rocci, 23, is an Erasmus student from Turin, Italy. She is studying semiotics at the University of Helsi

I landed in Helsinki with 30 kilos of luggage and a backpack full of stereotypes and prejudices – the ones that every tourist has before leaving for a new trip.

But after living in the Finnish capital for six months I, day by day, got free from these ideas that probably are not completely wrong but a bit superficial. They describe Finland as a country of wonderful blonde women, of hordes of people depressed by the sharp cold and of reindeers lurking in every urban park.

This is the fee each traveller has to pay: moving from the condition of the tourist who looks at the world behind his camera to the role of student, worker and inhabitant of a foreigner country that becomes less foreign and friendlier with time.

Indeed, walking in the city centre, I noticed with astonishment that the majority of the female population hates her natural hair colour and changes it into unconvincing shades of brown or strong black. That may sound strange but, indeed, the reverse situation happens in Italy substituting those shades in the hairdresser shops with platinum blond. Instead, I met an eccentric and multi-ethnic population, far away from my ideal of top models carrying around cute smiling blonde children.

Before leaving Italy, my friends warned me about the Finnish tendency of drinking too much. It’s true; but once again, superficial and inaccurate. Tipsy and drunk guys are in every corner on Saturday night, but even more people are sober and nobody, even among drunks, bothers anyone.

In my first week at University I fixed my eyes on my watch, worried sick about being late for classes and appointments. I believed that not respecting the traditional Finnish punctuality would be really impolite. Then I found out that each lessons started about fifteen minutes late, just as in my dear old Italy. I drew a sigh of relief and I felt much more at home.

One last defeat of my preconceived beliefs came when I had to run through 10 offices looking for a document that nobody could give me because of some strict rules in force. Finnish bureaucracy works well thanks to its rules but sometimes those rules are so strict that they can drive you crazy.

I was also wrong about the reindeer. When I went to Lapland I was ready with my camera to shoot flocks of wild reindeer and the only two that I found were domesticated reindeers next to my cottage.

Of course I have to point out that Helsinki is not all that is Finland and that the freeway surrounding the city forms a noticeable border between the rest of Finland and the capital, a big, cosmopolitan city with a specific identity.

By the way: what I heard about Finland before leaving Italy were partly true, but those ideas described it as accurately as pizza, mafia and mandolin describe Italy.