Finland

Tampere in winter gave me a flipped classroom, one very long walk, 95°C — and a hole in the ice.I had prepared for Finland more seriously than I do for most destinations, and not only intellectually. Our hosts had stressed the importance of proper winter clothing often enough for me to treat it as an assignment: thermal underwear, thick socks, an e

One winter evening, one quiet morning and a ferry waiting at the end Helsinki was never meant to be the main event. The journey had already taken me north to Lapland and then south to Tampere for an Erasmus programme, while Tallinn was waiting across the Gulf of Finland before the final return home. Helsinki entered the itinerary almost as a matt

A frozen Arctic morning, Santa’s Christmas economy, and Rudolph in a bun. In January, I was travelling to Tampere for an Erasmus programme when one rather obvious thought occurred to me: it would be genuinely sad to spend several days in Finland without visiting Lapland. The Erasmus grant did not dictate how we had to travel, so my colleague and