Finland and Estonia weren’t exactly at the top of my travel bucket list. Honestly, I don’t know if they were on it at all.
That was kind of the point.
I traveled to Helsinki, Finland, and Tallinn, Estonia, with the dean of the business school and seven other students as part of a club focused on visiting places we might not otherwise think to visit. While we were there, we got to experience the culture, visit businesses, and see what everyday life looked like in two countries that most college students probably aren’t rushing to book a flight to.
Before the trip, I didn’t really know what to expect from either country. By the end, I had walked through the streets of Helsinki, explored Tallinn’s Old Town, and experienced two places that made me question why they weren’t on my bucket list in the first place.
Both cities were beautiful, but in completely different ways. Helsinki felt closely connected to nature and the water, while Tallinn surprised me with how modern it felt outside of its historic Old Town. And because neither destination came with a huge list of things I felt like I had to see, I could actually appreciate where I was instead of worrying about checking off every tourist attraction.
There’s nothing wrong with dreaming about Paris, Rome, London, or any of the other destinations that seem to be on everyone’s European itinerary. I still want to visit plenty of them. But Finland and Estonia showed me that sometimes the places you know the least about give you the most to discover.
So, if Finland and Estonia aren’t on your bucket list either, hear me out.
Helsinki brought us closer to Finnish culture.
One of the things that surprised me most about Helsinki was how much of the experience revolved around nature and the water. For a capital city, it didn’t feel like I was constantly surrounded by buildings and busy streets. Being so close to the ocean gave the city a completely different atmosphere than what I expected.
We also got to experience something Finland is known for: the sauna. Going to a Finnish sauna was already something I probably never would have thought to do on my own, but the experience got even more memorable when I went from the heat of the sauna into the Baltic Sea.
Yes, I willingly got into freezing water.
It wasn’t exactly an activity that had been sitting on my bucket list, but that’s also what made it one of the moments I remember most from the trip. I wasn’t in Finland trying to recreate an itinerary I’d seen a hundred times online. I was getting to experience something that was actually part of being there.
Tallinn took us from modern to medieval
Tallinn surprised me for a different reason. Before visiting Estonia, I didn’t really have a picture in my head of what the city would look like. What I didn’t expect was how modern Tallinn would feel.
Then we went to Old Town.
Walking into that part of the city felt completely different from the Tallinn we had already seen. The modern feeling disappeared, and suddenly we were surrounded by medieval architecture and streets that made the history of the city impossible to ignore. It was one of those places where simply walking around was part of the experience.
That contrast was probably one of my favorite things about Tallinn. Within the same city, we got to experience a modern European capital and then walk into an area that felt like it belonged to a completely different period of history.
The trip didn’t suddenly put an end to my travel bucket list, but it did make me think differently about it. Some places are worth visiting simply because you don’t know what to expect. Finland and Estonia weren’t destinations I would have picked for myself, and that’s exactly why I’m glad I got to experience them.