The nightlife in Lappeenranta is not the most exciting. The city has 70.000 inhabitants including roughly ten percent students. Fortunately Fins have a solution for this problem and it is called sauna. We attend the sauna, in the building where I live at least twice a week and not rarely this involves beer and music. It is true that alcohol is expensive, especially strong liquor, but it is not outrageous. It is a little more expensive than Amsterdam. Nevertheless Fins don’t care about this and like to party and drink alcohol a lot.

About the climate: yes sun is scarce, sunset is at around 2.30 p.m. and at 3.30 p.m. it is dark. The weather is stable: always clouded with a little bit of rain or snow, depending on the temperature. The temperature dropped from +15°C in September to -5°C now in December. My rescuer to the lack of sun has been vitamin D, I take 3000 percent of the daily recommended doses and in my opinion this is not to much. The nice thing about this climate is that you feel in a continuous state of Christmas.

Nature in Finland is beautiful. Finland is one big forest with thousands and thousands of lakes. It doesn’t matter where you are, I live at the edge of the city centre, but in 200 metres I am in the forest near lake Saimaa where I can go for a run. To conclude this I would like to stress that I’ve had a great time where I’ve made lots of new friends, but I won’t miss the low amount of sun!