Weird #4: Pay-by-Phone

It turns out that in Finland you can pay for lots of stuff by calling a phone number and the price is automatically deducted from your phone. Or at least I think that is what is happening... here at my apartment, I call a number, listen to a recorded message in Finnish that makes no sense to me whatsoever, and the washing machine turns on. You can pay for the bus or train too. You call a number and it text messages back to tell you that you have a 1-hour ticket.

A friend of one of my classmates works for a construction company locally, and they had a bunch of old used phones (all made by Nokia of course!) , which they gave to us. At the local R-Kioski store (sort of a 7-11 except there are more of them) you can buy a "SIM" card (Subscriber-Identity-Module) which plugs into the back of the phone under the battery. We have the same thing in our phones back home, just that most of us don't know about them because we pay via annual contracts with a service provider. Anyhow, the SIM card gives you a phone number and comes with a prepaid amount of service on it, you plug it into the back of your phone and away you go. You can use the service value for phone calls, or for laundry, or for buses, or whatever. And when it gets used up, you buy a refill so that you can keep the same phone number you were using. Nice!