Скачать или смотреть Water oriented journey through the Finnish summer

This video is a water-oriented journey through the Finnish summer, showing how it can be explored. It might be for you if you’re interested in diving a bit deeper into the country as a whole – its society, its landscapes – rather than simply ticking off the main sights among big crowds.

Finland is a country of nearly 200.000 thousand highly fragmented lakes, with an almost endless amount of shoreline. Add to that a long Baltic Sea coast. For Finns, these waters are an essential, almost self-evident part of summer life. For others, however, they are rarely experienced in the way we Finns experience them – perhaps due to a lack of information, but also to expectations that do not quite align with reality.

In this video, I’ll show you how we Finns explore and enjoy these environments. It also highlights some of the key reasons behind Finland’s happiness – the easily accessible open and pleasant spaces almost everywhere.

This water-oriented journey takes you to around 70 beaches and swimming spots across lakes, ponds, rivers, and the Baltic Sea – guiding you to surprisingly warm waters this far north, often leading into the towns and neighborhoods that surround them. Along the way, you’ll also discover a selection of remarkable sauna and spa complexes.

In Finland, urban areas and natural landscapes blend in a distinctive way, structured differently from most other countries and requiring a slightly different approach to fully understand and explore them.

I will be skipping the obvious: central Helsinki and Lapland. They are already well documented, and there are plenty of excellent videos about them. Instead, I’ll take you to places that are less known, yet very much worth discovering – both in the quieter surroundings of Helsinki and across the Finnish Lakelands.
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00:00 – Intro
01:36 – Helsinki West: Lauttasaari – 7 beaches
02:50 – Helsinki East: Vuosaari
04:25 – Sipoo: Pilvijärvi
05:17 – Helsinki: Hietaranta (Hietsu)
05:53 – Vantaa: Pilvijärvi
07:14 – Nurmijärvi: Sääksjärvi
08:06 – Espoo – 5 beaches
10:07 – Porvoo: River Mustijoki
10:54 – Lahti, Nastola & Mäntsälä – 6 beaches + Finnish lunch buffets
16:32 – Lappeenranta: Lake Saimaa
17:45 – Joutsa
18:31 – Arrival in Kuopio
20:24 – Boating on Lake Kallavesi
25:26 – City bikes & e-scooters
27:28 – Kuopio Center & North
32:07 – Sweet summer evenings
33:01 – Kuopio South
35:57 – Summer 2024 Weather Summary
37:08 – Late Season Special: Tower of Puijo & saunas – Saunaravintola Kaihu (Mikkeli), Saana Kuopio, Luoto Kuopio
43:10 – Early Season Special: Tampere, Kuopio, Maaninka, Heinola & Kotka
45:33 – October Special: Smoke Saunas in Kuusijärvi (Vantaa)
47:06 – Rautavaara – Tiilikkajärvi – distant sandy lake
48:08 – Epilogue
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Mosquito tips:

On sunny days, you typically only encounter them in shady spots or sheltered nature areas. We didn’t meet a single mosquito during our swims, which mostly took place in sunny and semi-urban settings.

So where are they? Go into sheltered nature, and they will find you. In the evenings or rainy weather, they might appear almost anywhere, except in very urban areas. The far north, particularly Lapland, is a chapter of its own.
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Gadfly tips:

You primarily meet them in natural environments in July, and only rarely in urban areas. During our swims in this video, we only encountered them on the islands during our boat tour.

On the first, we soon encountered about 8 of them, prompting us moving on. On the second, we encountered only around 15 of them in over 3 hours. They all failed to get their blood meals and met their end on our skin, some disturbance being the only harm they caused.

If one starts buzzing around, calm down, let it land on your skin, and swat it. Otherwise, it may continue to bother you for a long time. Swatting it mid-flight is another great option, but hit it hard, or it will come back.

If one lands on your skin without you noticing, don’t panic: if you feel a small sting, it’s likely one, and you have about two seconds to swat it. Only a successful blood meal would leave a mark or some pain on your skin. Even then, it would hardly hurt compared to a wasp sting, and you’d likely forget it within a few minutes.
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Cities and towns: Espoo, Hamina, Helsinki, Hollola (now part of Lahti), Joutsa, Kotka, Kuopio, Lahti, Lappeenranta, Maaninka (now part of Kuopio), Mikkeli, Nilsiä/Tahko (now part of Kuopio), Nurmijärvi, Porvoo, Rautavaara, Sipoo, Tampere, Vantaa.

Lakes and ponds: Jääsjärvi, Hervantajärvi, Hunttijärvi, Iso-Kukkanen, Iso-Valkeinen, Joutjärvi, Kallavesi, Saimaa, Kuusijärvi, Kymijärvi, Maaninkajärvi, Pieni-Valkeinen (pond), Pilvijärvi, Pitkäjärvi, Saimaa, Sammakkolampi (pond), Suolijärvi, Sylvöjärvi, Syväri, Särkijärvi, Sääksjärvi, Tiilikka, Valkeinen, Villähteen Kukkanen, Vähäjärvi.

Rivers: Mustijoki

Sauna/spa complexes: Saana Kuopio, Luoto Kuopio, Kuusijärvi Vantaa, Kaihu Mikkeli.
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