I’m back home after a 20-day trip through Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, St. Petersburg, Finland, and Stockholm. When I was researching the Baltic countries and Finland, I found very little information available online. Unlike my trip to Croatia, I really wasn’t sure what to expect this time.
While applying for my visa through Finland, I met a Finnish resident who told me, “I’ve never known anyone to come to Finland for tourism.” That statement left me stumped. When you look at a map of Finland, all you see are water bodies and vast stretches of greenery.
Ironically, it was Finland’s landscape that turned out to be the most majestic of all the countries I visited. It’s not just the lakes and pine trees everywhere, but also the absolutely beautiful coastline Finland has along the Baltic Sea.
The three Baltic countries are so close to each other, yet they are very different—culturally, architecturally, and even the languages are vastly different.