Finland was probably one of the countries that I was most excited to visit. I had an amazing trip planned during a long weekend while I was studying in Berlin. What made this trip even better was that my best friend Alyssa, who studied in Aberdeen with me, came to Finland with me. It was super nice having her as a travel buddy again.

 

My journey to Finland began on Friday, November 28 at 4:00 AM in Berlin. After a quick shower and breakfast, I headed to the U-Bahn to ride to the airport. Surprisingly, the airport was very crowded at 6:00 in the morning. My flight boarded on time and was only two hours. No complaints. As I landed in Helsinki, I got a text from Alyssa saying her connecting flight from Stockholm to Helsinki was cancelled due to an ice storm in Stockholm the night before. The flight company booked her on another later flight but this would not work because she had to make a connection to Rovaniemi with me. She had to book a separate flight to Helsinki so that she could make the Rovaniemi flight in time.

 

She arrived in time and we walked around the airport and tried to find something to eat. Everything was super expensive and there were not many options. I decided to get a hotdog wrapped in bacon. We boarded our flight to Rovaniemi with Norwegian Air. I was sitting in the emergency exit row so I had tons of leg room. I loved it. The flight was only over an hour long. We took a shuttle bus from the airport to our hotel. There was a bit of a mix up with us and the driver. We told him that we needed to be dropped off at Hotel Rudolph but the driver said that we needed to go to Hotel Santa Claus to check in. We had no idea what he was talking about. The bus passed our hotel so we got off at the next closest stop. As we got to the hotel, we saw a sign on the door that said to check in at the Hotel Santa Claus. The driver was right. I never stayed at a hotel where the check in was a 15 minute walk down the road. Well, we did not have time to go check in because we would be picked up soon for our northern lights tour.

 

Rovaniemi is a city in northern Finland, just on the Arctic Circle line. Rovaniemi has 60,000 inhabitants. It was probably 10 degrees Fahrenheit when I was there and the locals were just wearing hoodies and sweatpants. I guess that temperature was warm for them. There was probably a foot or more of snow there as well.

 

For the northern lights tour, we were picked up outside of the hotel by our tourguide. She said that we could leave our bags in the van during the tour. What I thought would be a problem turned out not to be. There were about 15 of us on this northern lights tour. I will cut to the chase... I did not get to see the northern lights, unfortunately. I so desperately wanted to see them but the sky was just too cloudy. We drove out to a river and had a fire and barbecue. We could choose between pork and reindeer sausages. I chose pork because I did not want to eat what I would be feeding the next day. I also ate gingerbread, roasted marshmallows, and drank warm berry juice. All of the guides were nice and helpful. They did their best to help us find the northern lights. They were always checking the weather and we would move locations to where the sky was clearer. At our last attempt, we just missed seeing the lights by four minutes. I guess this gives me a reason to go back to Rovaniemi. I am still disappointed. I really wanted to see the northern lights but the experience with being out in the middle of nowhere in Finland and having a fire was still nice.

 

The next day was probably one of the best days in my life. I got the whole North Pole Experience: Huskies, reindeer, snowmobiles, and Santa's village. Early Saturday morning, Alyssa and I were picked up at the hotel by our guide. His name is Malcolm and he is from Wales. He was absolutely fantastic and loved having Americans on his tour. He even filmed us for a promotional video for the company. Also on the tour were two Australian ladies and four girls from Taiwan. Only one out of the four Taiwanese girls could speak English. Therefore, they felt as though they did not need to pay attention. They would talk when other people were talking and I thought that they were extremely disrespectful. There were honestly too many Asians in Rovaniemi. However, I did not let them ruin my trip.

 

Our first stop on the tour was to the husky farm. The huskies are so beautiful and well behaved. First, we took a sled ride with the huskies pulling us. The track was only about 800 meters and the ride might have lasted two minutes, but it was so cool. The owner of the huskies told us all about her animals. She used to be a school teacher but loved her huskies so much that she gave up her teaching job to work permanently with her huskies. She told us that these huskies love to work and that they do not like having days off. They are trained to work. She said that you cannot train any dog to do this, the dogs have to want to work. We also got to meet some husky puppies, five and six weeks old. They were absolutely adorable. After 8 months, a husky is fully grown and can begin to work. We had some gingerbread and warm berry juice and headed over to the reindeer farm.

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We had about 15 minutes to walk around and meet the reindeer and feed them. We then got pulled in a sled around a track by a reindeer, very similar to the huskies. Some of the reindeer are absolutely beautiful. It felt like a true winter/Christmas experience. There was one white reindeer that was stunning. I got to feed this reindeer.

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After the sled ride, we went inside a hut to warm up with a fire, and more gingerbread and warm berry juice. A young girl who works on the reindeer farm told us all about reindeer in Finland and she was quite informative. Both male and female reindeer have antlers. Females have them the whole year and males drop the antlers every year and grow them back in April. Only the male reindeer are used to pull the sleds. In northern Finland, there are 180,000 people and 200,000 reindeer. The Finnish do not want the reindeer in the north mixing with the deer in the south. Therefore, they keep them restricted to only the north. There are five animals that eat reindeer in Finland: brown bears, wolves, wolverines, lynx, and eagles. Make that six if you include humans. The main use of the reindeer is for meat and tourism. Reindeer usually live up to 15-20 years of age. The oldest reindeer at the farm that I visited is 19 and is now retired. Female reindeer can have a baby every year. These reindeer also take 3-4 years to train. They have to get used to people and pulling sleds.

 

From the reindeer farm, we took a short van ride to the snowmobiles. We got a ten minute demonstration of how the snowmobile works and learned all of the hand signals that Malcolm would be using during the ride. I let Alyssa drive the first half of the journey. I do not like driving at all and prefer to be driven around. The scenery was straight out of a movie. Miles and miles of snowy trees. It was funny to me that we were driving on roads specific for snowmobiles. We had to cross roads and look both ways. It felt as though we were driving a real vehicle. In the middle of the journey, we stopped to take pictures and of course eat some gingerbread and drink some warm berry juice. I drove the snowmobile on the way back. I was nervous and needed persuasion from Malcolm to drive but I am glad that I did. I think that I drove quite well and I could have gone much faster.

 

That was the end of the tour. We drove back to the tour office and gave back our snow suits, gloves, and helmets. Malcolm was kind enough to drop us off at Santa's Village. We walked around Santa's village. It is extremely cute and felt very Christmas-like. You can see the Arctic Circle Line there as well as meet Santa. We grabbed some pizza at a restaurant where I saw a guy with a Steeler's T shirt on. Steelers Nation is everywhere. From the restaurant, we got a taxi to the airport. The airport is quite small. I had an emergency exit seat again and even got to board first. I probably had the most leg room on that entire flight. I could have laid in front of my seat. It was fantastic.

 

We landed in Helsinki, took the train from the airport to the city center, and walked twenty minutes to the hotel. The hotel is quite nice. We went to sleep shortly after our arrival.

 

The next morning, we had a wonderful buffet breakfast at the hotel. The highlights of the buffet were definitely the cinnamon rolls and meatballs. The rest of the day consisted of us roaming around Helsinki. The city is very decorated for Christmas. There are lights everywhere. However, there was only a tiny Christmas market and it was not very good. Besides two churches, there was not much in Helsinki that excited me. We honestly spent most of our time eating and shopping. We had to get Pizza Hut for lunch, as this a tradition of ours when we travel anywhere. We were going to have a nice sit-down dinner at a restaurant, but after napping at the hotel, we were too tired for that and just got some groceries from a supermarket around the corner.

Monday morning, we woke up at 6:00, left the hotel at 6:30, got to the train station at 7:00, and took the train to the airport to arrive by 7:30. Coincidentally, both of our flights were flying out of the same gate so we were able to sit together before Alyssa left to go home.

 

I had a wonderful trip in Finland and will remember my time in Rovaniemi (The North Pole) forever. I would go back and do it all again.

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