Hey,
my name is Corinna, I´m a 22 year old student from Austria and currently in my abroad semester in Turku, Finland.
Why did I decide to go to Finland? I honestly don´t know, when it came to choosing a country my only requirements were it has to be a cold country (I´m not really a fan of heat) and a country where I have never been to. Well in Finland I have both, so I guess it was a good choice!
First I wanted to go to a university in Lapland but my home university was not on the same page here.... They gave us the choice between Turku, Helsinki and Kouvola. Well as you know, I ended up in Turku and until now it has been quite nice here!
Turku 790 years old and therefore the oldest city in Finland and its former capital. It was first part of Sweden and then part of Russia and after Russia won the war against Sweden, the Russian emperor Alexander I thought that Turku was too aligned with Sweden and also way to close to the former ruler so he decided that Helsinki will be the new capital.
The great fire of Turku was in 1827 and about 75% of the city burned down.They rebuild the city but big parts of the central government and The Royal Academy of Turku, the university which the Queen of Sweden opened 1640 in Turku, were moved to Helsinki because they burned down in the fire.
Nowadays Turku is still one of the biggest cities in Finland with around 186.000 inhabitants.