Enterprising, adventure and sausage in Finland
If you wonder how to pull through in a foreign country, in a different culture without any kind of background, Feri Vilisics’s story, who lives in Finland, is just for you. We valiantly overcame the distance between Helsinki and Pécs so that you can witness how a biology graduate from Pécs became one of the most popular sausage traders in Helsinki, the founder of the brand Feri's Sausages, and president of the Slow Food Helsinki Group. Our conversation reveals that not all is rosy even in Finland, you have to work hard for success. After reading eating sausages is hotly recommended!
Did you really graduate from the University of Pécs?
Yes, in order to be precise, I was accepted to the then Janus Pannonius University in 1997, and I graduated from UP, after the transformation and renaming of the institute, in 2003. I studied biology at the Faculty of Sciences. I had been interested in biology, particularly in taxonomy and ecology in secondary school as well. I got my PhD in environmental sciences in Debrecen, and as a researcher I was especially interested in the population and taxonomy of terrestrial crustaceans (Isopoda, Oniscidea), and the diversity of urban and modern green-roof invertebrate fauna.
Can you remember your first experience at university?
It was the freshman camp in Tata. As far as I remember, it started on the day that Princess Diana died, and the next day the band Kispál és a Borz was playing. They were great times… we used to go out to Rák, Szenes Club in the faculty building, the University Club, Sörház and to parties at the Jakabhegy building… I have no idea where students have fun today.
What else can you be grateful for to the university besides parties?
For my degree and my wife. But joking aside, I regard my university years as a defining period of my life, during which I got my best friends and a lot of experience. Pécs is a fantastic town, it’s good to live there and to return there, but I don’t really know what I could do there due to lack of jobs… However, there’s no doubt in my mind that I could and still can make the most of the knowledge I obtained at UP. I wasn’t among the most brilliant students, but I owe my teachers a lot. Although a lot of what I learnt has moved into some well-locked corner of my memory, I will never forget my teachers’ examples as human beings, the way they responded to certain situations. I think especially fondly of the anatomy practices with Dr. Edit Pollák (and it’s not a joke!), of Dr. Gyula Hoffmann’s lectures and of the field practice days with Dr. Tamás Morschhauser. My consultants, Dr. Edit Vadkerti and Dr. Sándor Farkas, who now teaches in Kaposvár and who introduced me to Isopoda, mean a lot to me.
Why Finland? What inspired you to go on with your life there?
I met my wife, the Finnish Niina in Pécs, she was an Erasmus student at the Faculty of Arts. After graduation I immediately got a job in Budapest, at the Biology Institution of the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine of Szent István University, then, after a lot of loops, we ended up in Finland 8 years later.
I got a 10-month scholarship at the world-wide renown Urban Ecology Research Group of the University of Helsinki, which was later extended by a year.
Photo: Niina Ala-Fossi
How do you like Finland and Finnish culture?
Finland is a ‘dreamland’ in many aspects, safe and convenient, humane and open… you see the kickbacks only when you have already stuck there. It’s a very expensive country, so you can’t enjoy the Finnish plenty if you don’t have a job. Since everything is expensive, you can live on benefits only at a low standard. One of the secrets is that you must learn to speak Finnish. If you don’t speak Finnish you close yourself out of Finnish society and you’ll have difficulties in finding a job. I speak the language to some degree, and I keep improving it.
I like Finnish culture, but I’m not in awe of it. I treat it as it is, I won’t say ‘Finnish is better than this or that”. I like their closeness to nature, the simplicity and modesty, but you know what? I like Budapest, Rome, Istanbul and New York all the same. If you know a people’s history you’ll know why everything is the way it is in any particular country.
Photo: Niina Ala-Fossi
Where did you get the idea of making sausages from?
Gastronomy has always been close to me. It was Pécs where I started to polish my cookery with my flatmates, from rice with liver paste, frank stew and rice with sour cream and carrots to much more sophisticated things. In Helsinki we entertained a lot of guests, we even opened a pop-up restaurant (info: www.restaurantday.org), and I also held Hungarian courses for Finnish people. I got the idea of making sausages in Helsinki from a Finnish and a Hungarian university colleague; the whole idea is theirs.
How was your business, Feri's Sausages, born?
On a successful Restaurant Day, when we served our own home-made sausages in our pop-up restaurant. That time we hadn’t had any success with applications for a long time, so the pocket money came in handy. And then people kept calling us for one or two more kilos, so I was drifting from science to sausages and business slowly but surely.
It’s important to see that while we Hungarians insist on our red pepper sausages under any circumstances, sausage is made in every country in the world – mostly without red pepper – and what kind of sausages these are! On average, we make 11 or 12 different sorts a week, from pork, beef, chicken and venison. Customers are willing to pay for good quality. We refuse to add sugar, flour, soy or any other additives if it’s not required by the original recipe. Our Philippine sausage is sweet, though, so we add some sugar to it besides salt, black pepper and garlic.
Photo: Niina Ala-Fossi
Which sausages sell the best?
The one with red pepper, the mutton-pork-rosemary one, and the Italian ‘salsiccia fresca’ which is made with red wine and pecorino cheese.
Have you put yourself to the test at sausage-making competitions as well?
I was recommended for the first “Best Sausage in Helsinki” competition in August 2015, so I took part on an invitational basis, next to professional meat producers of the city. Three of my sausages came in the top 10, and my red peppery one came first. And we won an award at the Székesfehérvár sausage-making festival in “special tastes” category in 2016.
Do you have any help?
We have an employee, and Niina helps a lot, too, so I can say three people work in the business on a daily basis. Besides the investor backing up the company does most of the marketing, and Helsinki-based Hungarian graphic Marcell Kismartoni dedicates a lot of his time to our visual design.
Photo: Niina Ala-Fossi
Where is your business now?
It’s going uphill. We progress slowly, we develop almost invisibly, step by step. A couple of restaurants and shops also buy from us, but mostly we sell to consumers on the Internet (link: http://hellomagyarok.hu/gasztro/a-termeloi-piac-uberje-a-finn-reko). In the last few weeks we have also opened a little shop where more and more customers come to buy from the freshest sausages in town. One of our patrons is the former owner of Elcoteq, the company which was a large-scale Finnish employer in Pécs, who we can talk a lot to about Hungary.
Would you tell us some more about the Slow Food Helsinki project?
The international organisation Slow Food started in Italy 27 years ago as a response to vanishing gastronomic diversity. Good, fair and pure food from local ingredients, based on local recipes. Thus local plant an animal varieties (not species!) can survive and local producers can get customers.
Anyone meeting the requirements can found a Slow Food group. It’s my second year as the head of the Helsinki group; we wish to bring worthwhile local producers and restaurants closer to customers by visits and Facebook communication.
Do you think you have made it?
You mean whether I am doing what I like? Yes, I can say that. Although I had always prepared to become a biologist, as you can see from our success, education and research is not everything. I think I’m blessed with good communication, management and trading skills, and I didn’t really use these in my university career. At Feri’s Sausages I can make use of them, although it’s not enough. We raise our child without any help from the family, which is quite difficult. We rent a flat in a block in the outskirts, my car can break down at any given moment, and money doesn’t just come out of a hole in the wall. Enterprising is an expensive adventure in Finland.
How can you see your future?
Lots of work, lots of work, lots of work, then having cocktails in the Bahamas till the end of my life.
By Bettina Bartakovics