It was well below freezing on the Finnish coast, but there my friends and I were, frolicking outdoors near a pool whose glassy waters were a blue of almost infinite depth. Soon it threatened to snow, and we strained in anticipation to catch the chubby flakes in our mouths much like copious amounts of mouth-watering candy.

It was May.

Shocking as it may sound; this shouldn’t come as a surprise when geography is factored in: located at roughly the same latitude as Siberia, Finland is one of the coldest places on Earth.

Still, we were oblivious to the elements.

The most northern labyrinth in the world proved a lengthy distraction, as did our cavorting on the beach along the Gulf of Finland; though temperatures were well below freezing, that didn’t prevent us from doing cartwheels in the sand.

Coffee was needed – as much to warm ourselves as to refresh – so we gallivanted over to Tulikukko, a cheery café located along the town’s harbor. White chocolate mochas and, strangely enough, ice cream provided us the sustenance to continue our cavorting.

The day had been nothing if not free-spirited. Awakening in Tampere (Finland’s second-largest city), after flying in from Lithuania the night before, I boarded a train for Kouvola to sojourn with my friends Sara and Sari.

The journey, along the western terminus of the Trans-Siberian Railway that stretches from Finland all the way to the Pacific Ocean (a fact that surprised me), was as squeaky-clean as the Tampere Dream Hostel I’d spent the night in; germaphobes can find solace in the fact that Finland may very well be the most sanitary place on Earth, both physically and in the good-naturedness of its people.

I met Sara at the cozy, modern-looking Kouvola train station; she was positively bursting with ideas of what to do.

Our first order of business was to get some food. Sara suggested we try Rosso, a chain that’s quite famous throughout the country. I sampled the tortelloni pollo e gorgonzola – giant tortellini in gorgonzola sauce with grilled chicken breast, balsamic syrup, and rucola (€13.90) – and found it to be just the right blend of flavor and full-bodied voluptuousness so often lacking in chain restaurants. The atmosphere – comparable to many stateside Italian chains – wasn’t overly cheesy or prefabricated, and although the waitress didn’t speak a lot of English (somewhat of a rarity in Finland); she was bubbly enough that it didn’t matter.

Having sufficiently satiated my caloric intake for the next three days, we meandered through Kouvola. The city of 88,000 is a young city, and there was no plainer evidence of this than at the Kymenlaakso University of Applied Sciences (KyAMK). Opened in 1996, enrollment stood at 4,024 in 2010, with students studying everything from international business to design and media studies. The campus architecture, a blend of a renovated factory with postmodernist additions reminiscent of Star Trek, somehow seemed to work despite the whimsicality of it all.

Our tour of Kouvola ended with a visit to Kouvola Central Church (built in 1978, it’s the largest church in town), a building in and of itself a symbol of the harmonious modernity of Finland, and soon I found myself in a car with my friend Sari heading to Hamina, her hometown.

Located along the southern coast and a mere 150 kilometers from Saint Petersburg, Russia, Hamina has a decidedly maritime feel. Wood buildings, swooning seagulls, solitary piers, jutting jetties, and a dearth of fish houses abounded in the hamlet-like town that felt as though it were straight from the 1950s. For someone who grew up in close proximity to the sea, it was oddly nostalgic – despite the fact I had never been there before.

A brief tour through Hamina’s winding streets (with the center of the city built on a hill, many of the roads circle around the old Town Hall), we picked up Sari’s friends Nina and Tiina – who might be the tallest woman I’ve ever met – and together the four of us headed to the beach near Kotka, another small port town.

But it wasn’t the idyllic charm of Kotka or the fishermen selling their catches out of boats that lured us in, it was the chance to have a day at the empty beach.

Part of the savoir vivre in Finland is merriment, and the soft-as-potato-flour sand provided just that. Maybe it was the “edge of the map” vibe I kept getting from an area about 3,000 kilometers from the North Pole, or the fact that I was away from the throngs of tourists that visit nearby Helsinki in the warmer months, but either way, the place was a northern paradise.

Away from the hustle and bustle of more popular European destinations, the pace of life along the Finnish coast slows to a mere crawl, a place where taking one’s time is de rigueur. As we joked while hiking up a waterfall closer to the Kotka harbor, I looked down at the scene below — there wasn’t a traffic light in sight.

In that moment, I realized I’d found what I’d really come to Finland for: introspection. This was the Finnish Riviera, and it was the most tranquil place in the world, despite our loud horseplay.

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