LIVING IN KUOPIO

Welcome to Kuopio,

the 8th Finnish city with about 118 000 citizens. As you can see, it is located in the center-east part of Finland, and is the capital of North Savonia region.

Kuopio is in the center of Scandinavia, so from there you can easily traval to Lapland, Russia, Estonia, Sweden and all Europe! see more in the useful information sections!

Because Kuopio hosts the University of Eastern Finland (Campus of Kuopio), it is a big and active student city where a lot of student events are organized! We must admit it is not the biggest city in Finland, but there is all you need : a lot of students to make friends, a superb university, a street full of bars and clubs? “What else”? ☺ even more…but you will discover more about that in the next sections!

How to get to Kuopio?

Finland has a quite developed transportation system…
There is an airport in Kuopio 15km away from the city center, accessible with several airlines, depending on where you come from: Finnair / Airbaltic / Lufthansa / SAS

If you will to come by plane, you will have a stop in Helsinki for sure. Also, be careful, as there is not a lot of companies going to Kuopio, the tickets can be very expensive! Be preventive ☺ and buy your ticker as soon as you know when you should arrive.

From the airport to the center, there is the bus number 40, which will cost you 5, 5€ and leaves from the airport at regular hours.

You can check if there is a bus when you land with this website : http://kuopio.matkahuolto.info/en/ don’t be afraid it is only in finnish but here is some useful names :
Airport stop is called Lentoasema
Center stop is called Maljalahdenkatu
Then choose the time and date. In the results you need to look at “From stop” time and there you know the time at which the bus leaves the airport! ☺

You can also take a taxi, which will of course leave you wherever you want, it will cost around 40€ (but think about sharing the taxi! ☺)

But you have another solution: the train! It will leave you directly in the center of Kuopio. A ticket from Helsinki to Kuopio costs around 60€ and lasts about 5hours. There is several trains in a day, you can check the schedule and prices in the Finnish train system website (available in Finnish, English, Swedish and Russian): http://www.vr.fi/en/index.html . This is just an example with Helsinki; of course you can take the train to Kuopio from many other destinations.
From here I leave you to discover more about the city through the website…have fun in Finland!!

Steffie CASANOVA