Road Trip: Essential Finnish Sauna Spots

Intro #

As someone who enjoys visiting Finland, I try to seize every opportunity to do so. This time, the excuse was attending the famous annual mobile saunas festival in the somewhat remote city of Teuva. To make the most of it, I extended my journey by adding a few interesting sauna spots along the way, suggested by a Tampere-based colleague of mine (thanks, Aki!).

I ended up with the following list of locations for my journey:

• Teuva: Mobile Saunas Festival. Extracted tooth. Burned down Volvo.
• Tampere (and beyond): Rajaportti - Finland’s oldest operating public sauna. Flying plastic bottles. Abandoned savusauna.
• Niemi-Kapeen Smoke Sauna: Best. Sauna Experience. I ever had.
• Helsinki: Kotiharjun Sauna. Sompa Sauna*. Surprise in Espoo.

Originally I was planning to create a single post covering the whole journey, by while I was writing, I realized just how many emotions, impressions, I carry for each of these places on top of the few dry facts I was aiming to mention. It wouldn’t be fair to compress it all into a single post, so there is a dedicate one for each of the destination.

I can’t help but finish this intro with a beautiful picture taken on a ferry on my way to Finland.