About

Welcome to Destination Unknown! Your host: Satu, a 34-year old newish mom, kayaker and outdoor enthusiast from Finland.

After school I packed my bags and headed to Ireland and France for my university studies and thought I’d never return. But there I was few years later, sitting in the office near Helsinki in Finland, staring at the damp, grey and cold early winter’s day out of the window. If the first thought that comes in your mind is snow when I say “Finland” you are quite right, there should have been snow. There wasn’t.

It didn’t take much to leave behind my dream job in sports marketing, pack my bags and head to the unknown destinations in search of warmer waters, new experiences and some more sunshine. Africa, North America, Europe all over.

Couple of years later the quest brought me and my British-Irish husband to Norway and it kind of looks like this is it. We are stuck. In a good way may I add! And while it might not be any warmer than Finland, at least we have mountains, rivers to run and amazing scenery around us.

With Norway came also the dream job number two, this time in the travel industry. And a year after that a beautiful baby girl who joined our family in November 2011.

Now it’s the three of us or often just me and the little one traveling around Norway, Europe and at times further afield with kayaks, skis, bikes or hiking boots packed in the bags. Sometimes for business, but most for most of the time for pleasure as I am still on maternity leave until the end of 2012.

I have no idea where this journey will take us but Norway has proved to be pretty amazing place to have a permanent base for frequent traveling adventures.

I would love if you joined in our journey to Destination Unknown by keeping up with the blog updates through email or RSS. You can also check in at Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram for little updates and images from the road and Norway.

Destination Unknown: Finnish version since 2009, English version since 2012.

Satu Vänskä-Westgarth

Outdoor enthusiast
Kayaker
Mom
Marketing, Communications & Sales specialist
Sports Retail & Travel Industry Expert
Travel & Freelance writer; weekly travel column in Skimbaco Lifestyle online magazine

Awards:

• 2012: Winner of the “3 Things in the City I Love” contest organised by Traveldudes, Velvet Escape and Wimdu with the post “City I (still) Love: Dublin“
• 2010: Destination Unknown (the Finnish version) was included in the “top 10 travel blogs in Finland” by Cision Finland 

Interviews in Finnish print media:

• June 2009, Aamulehti (regional daily newspaper)
• November 2010, Mondo (leading travel magazine)
• June 2012, Apoteekki (customer magazine for a large pharmacy chain)

Skimbaco Lifestyle and Skimbaco Travel: Weekly travel column. See the latest articles here.

• Destination Unknown
• 10 Exciting Adventure Travel Destinations
• Travel Photo of the Day: The Inside Passage, British Columbia, Canada
• Travel Photo of the day: Besseggen, Norway
• Travel Photo of the Day: The Acropolis, Athens, Greece

Rantapallo (in Finnish)

• Eurooppa lomailee – näin vältät pahimmat turistikaudet
• Aktiivilomailua Kreikassa
• Mahdollisuuksien Mumbai
• Intiaa ymmärtämässä
• Joulutunnelmaa norjalaisittain
• Viikonloppu Dublinissa
• Slovenia – maaesittely
• Vuoria, vettä ja viheriöitä – liikkujan Slovenia
• Villiponien valtakunta

Get in touch: satu@todestinationunknown.com // @satuvw