Traveling around Finland

We have already talked about traveling and how important and fun it can be during your studies. We also went through some of the available options and destinations in Finland but there are certainly a lot of possibilities around Finland too. There are some really interesting cities and places in the neighboring countries where you can travel on a student budget. There are also low cost planes to some destinations around Europe as well.

Probably the most interesting part of traveling to neighboring countries is taking the cruise ships. You can take fun cruise ships from Helsinki to Tallinn, Stockholm, Åland islands and Saint Petersburg regularly and to some other cities like Riga on special occasions. It is also possible to take cruise ships from Turku to Stockholm and Åland islands. All of the mentioned cities are in Schengen areas so you will not need a visa except for Saint Petersburg in Russia. However, there is a 72 hours visa free cruise to Saint Petersburg from Helsinki that might be a wise option because you will not have to worry about visa and its complications. There are usually a number of activities you can do on these ships and of course if you buy the tickets in advance you can find pretty cheap deals. The websites are as follows:

 https://www.sales.vikingline.com
https://www.tallinksilja.com/book-a-cruise
https://stpeterline.com/visa-free-rule (Saint Petersburg)

There are also cheap flights from Helsinki to all Scandinavian capital cities especially Stockholm. You can also fly to Stockholm from Tampere, Turku and Oulu. Moreover, if you miss the sun, Norwegian Airlines offer direct flight to Paris, Nice, south Spain, Athens and a number of cities in East Europe. There are also extremely cheap flights with Wizz air from Turku to Krakow, Warsaw and Gdansk in Poland and Skopje in north Macedonia. You can also take Ryanair from Tampere (closest international airport to Jyväskylä) to Budapest. Here are the websites:

https://www.norwegian.com
https://www.ryanair.com/fi/en
https://wizzair.com/en-gb

Just a few considerations, first these are not all the student budget trips you can plan and there are numerous other airlines or destinations for sure. There are also other means of transportation like train from Helsinki to Saint Petersburg. It is also good to know that non-EU students do not require a visa to travel to most of the countries in Europe with their student residence permit but you must always double and also make sure that your residence permit is valid during your trip and you can come back to Finland.