Winter in Finland

Writer: Agathe Aslanides

My name is Agathe Aslanides and I started studying at UEF in 2021. I’m part French and part Greek so moving to a cold country that has “real” winters with cold temperature was a big adjustment for me. I wanted to write a few lines to, hopefully, explain my own experience of Finnish winters and a few tips I have picked up along the way. A list of advice is available at the end of this page if you want to avoid having to read it all and just want to get the grips of it.


Sun behind the lake.

Continue reading “Winter in Finland”

Bikes, Dogs and Sauna

Bicycles were first introduced in Germany during wood and iron age, when “dandy horse” has been introduced in 1817, as a two wheels, with no pedal, however it required accurate balancing by the rider. Since then it have been versatile functions: recreation, work, military, show, sport, tourism, etc. and now we are in „hybrid bike” age.

In Finland there are about 3 million bikes compared to Beijing for example, where there are 9 million (Katie Melua tells us so). However over 60% of Finns are biking regularly and it is gaining and increasing momentum, as more and more people without reference to the age or social status choose to leave their cars behind and hop onto their bikes. As a result, 9% of all trips are made by bike. Biking is healthy, ecological  and fun.

 

For a Mid-European the cycling season in this country would be really short from somewhere plus 10 and above, however here riders are not afraid of neither the rain, nor slush, nor event winter climate, when we are below zero Celsius.

Continue reading “Bikes, Dogs and Sauna”