January 2017 Helsinki, Finland

I figured it would be easier to share my experience about my journeys by starting up with my travels to Helsinki, Finland in the beginning of this year. So, I have this new thing going on that I travel to countries without any expectations. Because if you have expectations that cannot be met, you will get some sort of disappointed. 

To be honest, I have never been a fan of the Scandinavian countries as I always just imagined them to be cold and boring. There was nothing actually screaming in my body that I want to explore any of these countries. But before some people get offended, my ignorant self was of course wrong! ;-)

I mean, it was definitely cold in the beginning of January but surely not boring. I was more than impressed by Finland and what it had to offer. Who thought that the Karoline that prefers sun and beach over everything, has a warm spot for Finland?

Our trip to Helsinki was a trip organized by my University. We had a huge marketing project going on with a Finnish Company, which gave us the opportunity to use this trip for our own interest but also getting to know our partner university and the company itself.

So why did I join even though I was not interested at all in visiting the country and it wasn’t mandatory? I am a huge believer in proving myself wrong. I wanted to see what every Scandinavia lover was talking about, so I decided to join the trip.

Our travel to Helsinki started in a disaster.

After we left on time to get to the Schiphol airport at 6 am in the morning, we had a smoothly ride towards Amsterdam. My boyfriend was so kind to take me and two of my friends to the airport, but as we reached close to Amsterdam, (really we were only 10 km away from it!), we were stuck in a huge traffic jam for the next hour. Bad enough, we only arrived at the actual Airport when our Gate was closing, so Kiss and Go it is, running straight to the Security. The security did not quite get how late we were, so they checked us thoroughly a couple of times before we can run to, you can guess it, the last gate at this huge airport.

After we actually gave up already and tried to run as Forrest Gump, we arrived sweaty at the Gate which luckily wasn’t closing yet! The flight attendant was laughing and there we are, sweaty as ever on our journey to Helsinki.

After a layover in Riga, we were arriving in Helsinki in the late afternoon. On our connection flight we met a Finnish student who just moved back from his Erasmus year in Groningen back to Finland which helped us immensely to get to our bus to Poorvoo.

Poorvoo is a small historical city 45 minutes away from Helsinki. Budget wise, we were lucky to stay with the international Students that study at the Haaga Helia University, which made the whole stay in Finland a lot cheaper and a lot more fun! Who guessed it, but there was one student party after another.

We spent a few hours a day to get to know the Universities and some companies around Helsinki. The rest of the time was free for us to explore the city and the area around! So we basically found ourselves strolling around to different streets, admiring places like the Senate Square and the pier of Helsinki. I can only recommend everyone to walk through Helsinki, I feel like if you walk everywhere on your journeys you actually get to see places you wouldn’t have seen before. The bus system there isn't bad at all, but I do prefer walking.

For all those shoppers out there, Helsinki offers an amazing range of Malls where you can shop for hours.The architecture in Finland reminded me a lot of the architecture found in St. Petersburg. We also had the opportunity to spent a day in Tallinn, Estonia for just 14€!! But I will talk about Estonia in another post ;-)

Conclusion: Finland definitely surprised me, but I recommend to visit the city at a warmer season! If you are a ski and winter lover, this place is for you. Oh, and please don’t forget to try Poorvoo’s famous Brunberg chocolate! You will not regret it ;-). So after all this text, I will just let the pictures speak for themselves.