Budget travel in Finland

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Helsinki during night

Finland is a great place to live: pretty small towns, unspoiled nature, and excellent welfare system and even the legendary mountain of Santa Klaus belongs to the Finns. However, from the traveler’s point of view, Finland can be a bit on the expensive side – it is a Scandinavian country after all!

However, it’s only a myth that Finland is outrageously expensive, but that doesn’t mean that it’s a backpacker country either. However, seeing the attractions of Finland are worth a bit of effort, and there are ways to stretch your budget during your stay. Budget travel in Finland is not impossible, and there are several useful tricks that can help you.

Transport

photo by aNantaB on Flickr

Finland is large, its cities are few and far in between, so you can’t really avoid transport of some type, whether it’s public transport or car rental. Train travel is very comfortable and modern, but it tends to be rather expensive. If you want tot travel from one large city to another, trains are generally a fast option and they leave at least once an hour.

The best way to save money on trains in Finland is to buy a Eurorail or Inter Rail pass. You can buy the Finnish Railway’s holiday pass (LomaPassi) too, but it is only available in summer and it would take quite a lot of traveling to make it good value for money.

The cheapest way of getting around in Finland is hitchhiking, but potential hitchhikers should keep in mind that hitching rides on motorways is illegal. However, you can hithhike on on-ramps, bus stops and petrol stations. Small, scenic country roads might seem like an unlike place to hike, but even if cars are more rare, they are more likely to pick you up.

Accommodation

The cheapest way to find accommodation in Finland is through the Finnish Youth Hostel Association, which has quite the extensive network throughout the country. National hotel chains such as Scandic and Sokos will definitely offer better deals than international hotel chains, and cottages can range from luxurious to quite basic, costing about 20 euro per night (but if you stay at a cottage, you have no choice but rent a car or hitchhike, as cottages are usually far from restaurants, shops and other facilities).

If you are an outdoors person, then you are in luck – you can camp on any patch of uncultivated land in Finland, provided it’s not private property. In the warmer months, having a tent can save your from a lot of accommodation related expenses.

Food

photo by Jen-SFO-BCN

Since many Finns eat out only on special occasions, eating a meal in a restaurant won’t be easy on your pocket. For breakfast and dinner, it’s better to keep to pastries and supermarket snacks if you’re on a budget, but there are a few places where you can eat a hot lunch for less than $10. Student cafeterias are open to everyone, and they are quite cheap even if you don’t have a Finnish student ID.

Other public office/company cafeterias have similar prices, but for a really quick and cheap meal, just stop by a grill stall (grilli) and get a hot dog, hamburger or a hearty  Finnish hearty meat pie (lihapiirakka).

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