| Page Views: 1,185 Last Visit to Finland: July, 2002 | Suomi by ginte - last update: Jun 28, 2007 |
Everything is possible... :) | Somewhere in the middle of Finland on the road |
Well, before I start I should say that it was the most craziest and adventurous trip in my life. Why? Guess...:) It was so because one my good friend and I went there by hitch-hiking. Actually it wasn't my first experience in going by hitch-hiking, but definitelly it was the first trip abroad in such a way. So, I guess it's a little bit different travelling experience than you're accustomed to while reading travels pages of other VT members.
So, Finland was the first one of Scandinavian countries I've 'discovered'. We started our trip on the early morning of the 4th of July, 2002 at the Vilnius highway. During almost 24 hours we reached Talinns port and took a ferry to Helsinki.
The first view of Helsinki was really amazing. It was a night with lots of little lights at the shores. It was an unforgetable view.
We had a walking tour through the center of Helsinki in the night by ourselves. No people, no cars... Empty and sleeping city. Althought it was quite safe to walk there all night. It was interesting to see how the city awakes and the sun is going up. Helsinki was totaly different in the morning if compare to the night. We even we able to get losted twice in the daylight...:))) |
|  | After that we started hich-hiking near the highway again, as we wanted to reach Lestijarvi which is in the middle of Finland. Before going there we knew that it's not common to hitch-hike in Finland anymore. But I should say that we were lucky enough as finnish people stopped their cars for us very often. :) So, we reached Lestijarvi very easily and changing more than 5 cars. The funniest thing during our way to Lestijarvi was that one finnish man stopped the car for us and we asked him about the destination we needed and then get into the car. And after several minutes of driving we realized that this man doesn't spaek English at all! So, we drove without any talks. But when we reached a point we had to go out, we were standing in an unknown place and tried to find this destination in our map, this man came to us and tried to help us speaking Finnish and showing the right direction for to hich-hike further. And we understood what he wanted to say to us:)) |
We reached Lestijarvi and stayed there with one finnish girl for a couple of days. She drove us around a little bit. We even tried to see mooses, but it was an unlucky day... Or maybe mooses were afraid to show up for two Lithuanians...:) The landscape in that area of Finland is really great: many lakes and forests... We really enjoyed the real finnish sauna!!! :) All finnish people have saunas in their houses or near to them, and even in the flats. That was amazing:)
Our trip back to Lithuania was the same as going forward. Just we took another destination and went to Tampere . It's a nice town for to walk around with a wonderful Cathedral. It's really worth to go there.
The trip ended at the same place where it started - in Vilnius, Lithuania on 13th July, 2002. |
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| Pros: | "Landscape is really amazing..." | | Cons: | "The weather can change several times per day..." | | In A Nutshell: | "Land of forests, metals and mobile phones..." |
ginte's Finland Travel Tips
 Comments for ginte about Finland | | | | |
VikingHarald Sun Mar 25, 2007 02:41 UTC
You right with Saunas and happy to see your nice pages. Regards VikingH From Nokialand | kittivitti Sun Jun 18, 2006 19:21 UTC
Liftari? ;-) | o00o Thu Jun 24, 2004 14:54 UTC
Great tips and info. | Gili_S Thu Jun 24, 2004 14:39 UTC
Wonderful story. I am glad you enjoy Finland. I was hitchhiking myself long time ago, now I can afford to drive here. (That was the original here :-) |
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