Getting around Finland: transport and apps

Helsinki

• Tap a contactless bank card on the reader as you board a tram, bus, metro or ferry. There is no card to buy and no app to install; the tap costs a little more than the EUR 4.80 ABC fare in the app, which is a fair price for not thinking about it.
• The HSL app is cheaper and lets you buy day tickets, which pay for themselves from about three journeys.
• Trams are the city's real network. Lines 2 and 4 pass most of what a first-time visitor wants to see, and the ferry to Suomenlinna runs on an ordinary HSL ticket.
• Ticket inspections are frequent and the penalty is large. Inspectors are polite, plain-clothed and entirely unmoved by a tourist's explanation.

Trains

• VR is the national operator and the trains are fast, punctual and comfortable.
• Advance fares are released about 3 months out and are dramatically cheaper than walk-up prices. Helsinki to Tampere or Turku can be a few euros booked early.
• The night train to Lapland runs from Helsinki to Rovaniemi and Kemijarvi, with sleeping cabins and car transport. It is the civilised way north and it books out for Christmas months ahead.
• Buy in the VR Matkalla app. Seat reservations are compulsory on long-distance trains.

Buses, and where the train does not go

• Matkahuolto covers the country's coach network, including the towns with no railway.
• Onnibus undercuts the train on the main corridors, sometimes to a euro or two, with the discomfort that implies.
• Rural bus services are thin. Outside the main lines, one or two departures a day is normal and Sunday may have none.

Driving, ferries and flights

• A car is genuinely useful in the lake district and Lapland and unnecessary in Helsinki.
• Winter tyres are compulsory from November to March, and hire cars come fitted; do not accept one that is not.
• Elk and reindeer on the road are the real hazard, especially at dusk. In Lapland reindeer stand in the road and do not move.
• Ferries to Tallinn take about 2 hours and to Stockholm overnight. Both are cheap, both are a normal part of a Helsinki trip.
• Domestic flights make sense to Lapland and almost nowhere else.