Virtual tourist guide for people visiting Finland

avij · Post by **avij** » Sun Dec 19, 2004 6:19 am

If you have questions about travelling to Helsinki (route planning, hotels/hostels/spare rooms, other places in Finland worth visiting etc), feel free to use this topic for your questions.

This doesn't need to be question-oriented though -- if you know of a good way to arrive to Helsinki or know some other thing that's worth sharing with the rest of us, please tell us!

I'll move some of the messages from other topics to this topic, don't be alarmed if you see some old messages in this topic.

lmviterbo · Post by **lmviterbo** » Sun Dec 19, 2004 6:19 am

The cheapest flights I find on the web from Lisbon to Helsinki are close to 400 €. Does anyone know if there's any cheaper option?

avij · Post by **avij** » Sun Dec 19, 2004 11:17 am

One option might be the following:
1) use your preferred method to go from Lisbon to Porto (some 269 km)
2) fly with Ryanair to London Stansted (price: 69,99 €)
3) fly with Ryanair to Tampere (price: 19,99 €)
4) take the bus 61 from the airport to central Tampere (some 17 km, 2,90 €)
5) take either a bus (some 140km, about 17,55 €) or train (22,40 € - 28,40 € depending on which type of train you choose) to Helsinki.

These calculations suggest that a one-way trip would cost something between 110 and 120 €, excluding the costs for the trip between Lisbon and Porto. Please note that prices may change and are dependant on the travel time. Also worth noting is that Ryanair doesn't fly to all the destinations every day, so final planning should be done when the date has been set.

It may be possible that some friendly EBTer from Tampere might assist you with your travels at the Tampere (Pirkkala) airport (ie. take you to central Tampere or directly to Helsinki).

avij · Post by **avij** » Sun Dec 19, 2004 11:23 am

Another option is Germanwings:

Lisbon - Cologne-Bonn: 67 €
Cologne-Bonn - Helsinki: 25 €

(the same disclaimers as in my previous message)

avij · Post by **avij** » Sun Dec 19, 2004 11:59 am

Some useful links: Finnish Hotels, Eurohostel, City of Helsinki

SN Brussels Airlines -- I used this myself for EBTM04
Finnair -- usually not the cheapest, but if all else fails you can try this

If you're coming by car, you'll need to travel across Denmark and Sweden. From Stockholm you can take the ferry, either to Turku (on the southwestern coast of Finland) or Helsinki. The ferries of Viking Line and Silja Line could be classified as floating hotels. If you just want to get from Sweden to Finland and don't want anything fancy, you may want to consider SeaWind Lines because their fares are cheaper. SeaWind operates only between Stockholm and Turku, though.

If you're coming by car you could also take the Baltic route through Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia and then take a ferry from Tallinn to Helsinki. There are quite a lot of options, take your pick.

As for timing, if the meeting is to be held in Helsinki, I think we'll have to rule out the weekends 5-7th August and 12-14th August because Helsinki will probably be quite crowded in early August. The 10th IAAF World Championships in Athletics will be held here between 6 - 14 August. 5000 - 20000 foreign tourists are expected to visit Helsinki during the event, so the hotels and such will probably be all reserved. This restriction only applies to Helsinki, other candidate cities are free to use those weekends for the meeting if they want.

aplfi · Post by **aplfi** » Sun Dec 19, 2004 7:48 pm

avij wrote:One option might be the following:
1) use your preferred method to go from Lisbon to Porto (some 269 km)
2) fly with Ryanair to London Stansted (price: 69,99 €)
3) fly with Ryanair to Tampere (price: 19,99 €)
4) take the bus 61 from the airport to central Tampere (some 17 km, 2,90 €)
5) take either a bus (some 140km, about 17,55 €) or train (22,40 € - 28,40 € depending on which type of train you choose) to Helsinki.

These calculations suggest that a one-way trip would cost something between 110 and 120 €, excluding the costs for the trip between Lisbon and Porto. Please note that prices may change and are dependant on the travel time. Also worth noting is that Ryanair doesn't fly to all the destinations every day, so final planning should be done when the date has been set.

It may be possible that some friendly EBTer from Tampere might assist you with your travels at the Tampere (Pirkkala) airport (ie. take you to central Tampere or directly to Helsinki).

Or take direct Ryanair bus from Tampere-Pirkkala to Helsinki 25€

Ralf · Post by **Ralf** » Sun Dec 19, 2004 10:23 pm

I have looked today for a flight to Tampre.
It cost me 215€ for Helsinki I'll look this week.

Speukes · Post by **Speukes** » Sun Dec 19, 2004 10:43 pm

Ralf, you pay €30 at Ryanair if you can reach Hahn airport in Germany. Köln-Helsinki should be about €25 with Germanwings.
We'll get good advise about cheap tickets from other forum members when we know where to go.

Ralf · Post by **Ralf** » Sun Dec 19, 2004 10:52 pm

Yes Frankfurt - Tampre - Frankfurt = 40€ but by train from home till Frankfurt is 175€

lmviterbo · Post by **lmviterbo** » Mon Dec 20, 2004 3:06 am

Wow! Thanks a lot, avij!!

(And thank you aplfi, too.)

How did you find these? You just knew RyanAir and GermanWings were pice-winners and looked for flights there, or do you know some cheapestflights.com site or something like that?

avij · Post by **avij** » Mon Dec 20, 2004 3:08 am

Ralf, Ryanair uses Frankfurt, Germanwings uses Köln. Köln is somewhat closer to you and thus the train trip should be cheaper as well. In fact, according to Deutsche Bahn, a train trip from Bergen op Zoom (which I suppose is close to your city) to Köln costs 33,90 €. To get to the airport from the Köln Hauptbahnhof, this link should be informative. Once you're at the airport, you can fly with Germanwings to Helsinki and from there you can continue wherever you want, including Tampere.

Ernst · Post by **Ernst** » Mon Dec 20, 2004 11:16 am

Well, I might just ad that it is impossible to get to Frankfurt-Hahn(Ryanair) directly by train. Those coming from direction Netherlands should go to Köln anyway. From there you can take a shuttle bus that takes 2 hours(10€). There is also a shuttle bus from Frankfurt which takes 1:45.
The Köln/Bonn airport is easy to reach from Köln and there are also direct train connnections from Düsseldorf, which might be useful for some people coming from the Netherlands

And don´t get confused, "Frankfurt Hahn" is over 100 km west of Frankfurt. About 200 km from Liège....

Ralf · Post by **Ralf** » Mon Dec 20, 2004 12:30 pm

Thanks Avij for your great help!
But that 33,90 is a bit strange because when I take a ticket here is more expensive

bhoeyb · Post by **bhoeyb** » Mon Dec 20, 2004 9:31 pm

Ernst wrote:And don´t get confused, "Frankfurt Hahn" is over 100 km west of Frankfurt. About 200 km from Liège....

I will never use "Frankfurt-Hahn" airport again in my whole life. I still have a bad feeling what happened last time going to that "tiny airport in the middle of nowhere" -I still feel sorry to Ellinoora and Heidi

- they missed their flight.
I can tell you, Brussels South (Charleroi) is the centre of the world comparing with Frankfurt-Hahn!

TwilightZone · Post by **TwilightZone** » Tue Dec 21, 2004 11:10 am

@ Giberski and others :

remember that although Finland is a land of large distances, Tampere is "only" 180 km north-west from Helsinki. That is 1h45 by train , 2h by car or ~2h30 by bus. I am sure the interested ones will have no problems getting there on a daytrip (or similar).

For Belgian and Dutch people, another option for you how to get to Tampere if you don´t want to go to Hahn:
Ryanair flies from Eindhoven to Stanstedt and there you can transit to Tampere. Price shouldn´t be too high

Only problem is that you´ll have to spend some hours in London because the schedules aren´t optimal.