Tervetuloa Tampere!
I believe the above means “Welcome to Tampere!”
I went to Tampere last week for work, and we saw some nice things in the area! The best bits were the dinner in the tower and the trip to the lakeside cottage which had a sauna :D
Anyway, Finland is quite pretty. I’m starting to notice the differences between forests there and here - forests in Finland have more pine trees, interspersed with birch trees, which were all changing colour while we were there. Gorgeous!
Unfortunately my luggage decided to not arrive with me, and after buying a few little things at the shop I then also decided to wait to see if my luggage arrived later before giving up at about 10.30 pm and buying a shirt and some underwear, etc. from the hotel lobby shop which seemed to CONVENIENTLY have these things… lol.
Of course what should happen but at around 11pm my luggage shows up! So I returned all the stuff (fortunately I hadn’t opened it) and yeah. Good times. The tv was default tuned into the “welcome” screen but also the local metal radio station, which was awesome.
Anyway we went for dinner up a tower, which had a revolving restaurant in it, which was cool. We got there right on sunset which made for a spectacular entrance to the tower!
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The dinner was amazing, and at the end I tried a cloudberry liqueur, which was so delicious, I just had to buy some in the duty free shop on the way home.
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The next day we went to a cottage by a lake to have a proper Finnish sauna. I went in with one of the other girls and we had a fantastic time - you essentially get naked, jump under a shower to get thoroughly wet, then go sit in the sauna. It was close to 100 deg C, and felt amazingly good. When the water was sprinkled onto the coals it became really a lot hotter for a moment, but it was nice - the only uncomfortable part was the initial sitting down on the wooden bench (quite warm!) and sometimes breathing in through my nose - the hot air felt like it was blasting my nostrils sometimes!
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After about 5-10 mins we went out and showered again to cool off, then went back in, and sweated for a little longer, then we grabbed our towels and went down to the freezing cold lake. It was FREEZING! But amazingly good after being so hot. We swam around for a few mins (that’s about all you can take), then went back, and by that stage I was feeling a little light-headed so I showered and went to have dinner. Fantastic experience though! Highly recommended!
Here’s a video of the lake and the cottage, but as usual you can see lots more photos in my photo gallery.
Click to viewMirrored from liedra dot net.