Travel while on leave

You are entitled to travel free of charge in Finland while going on and returning from leave.

This form of free-of charge travel also covers entering into service and mustering out, being transferred to home care and any assigned and transfer travel relating to military service. Those permanently residing overseas get a defined number of travel tickets to their home country.

For leave travel, you will receive a VR (Finnish Rail) barcode sticker on your conscript card for railway travel, a travel card for bus travel, and, under conditions as defined by your brigade-level unit, airline tickets for longer journeys.

Garrisons tend to arrange transportation by bus to the nearest railway and bus stations, or directly to the home municipality or region.

Reserve enough time for returning back

Please remember to reserve enough time for getting back to the service location when returning from leave, and pay particular attention to the potential transfer connections in public transportation that you may need to depend on. Being late for the set deadline can lead to becoming suspected of unauthorised absence without leave leading to disciplinary proceedings.

In cases that a so called legally binding hindrance contributes to your absence, for instance delays or cancellations in public transportation, no disciplinary proceedings will take place. It will be decided on a case-by-case basis whether this will be the case, and only in exceptional circumstances any local transportation delays will be considered to qualify as a legally binding hindrance.

If the form of public transportation taking you to the service sustains delays, proceed as listed below:

1. Ask the driver to give you a written statement on the delay.
   This written statement should indicate what the estimated time of arrival in destination should have been if on schedule, how long the delay was and why the delay occurred. If the driver does not provide you with this statement, you need state this in the possibly ensuing preliminary investigation. The Finnish Defence Forces’ will then make a request to the transportation organiser to determine whether the delay was caused by a legal hindrance.
2. Save the travel ticket and present it with the written statement to the personnel of your own unit.
3. Notify your unit’s duty officer immediately when the hindrance occurs that you will be late.

Travel by Train

You can book yourself a service trip with the personal code you received from the Defence Forces. You can make a travel reservation either on the or in the VR Matkalla application or in vr.fi.

The use of the VR Matkalla application and the long-term code require logging in. For this, you must have a personal account for VR's services.

On the train, you must present your travel ticket to the conductor and your conscript card (or other Defence Forces travel certificate) as proof of discount. While on duty, you must wear the service uniform of the Defence Forces.

With the reservation code, you travel in the Eko class. You can also upgrade your seat to the upper floor of the Restaurant wagon or to the Ekstra class by paying the extra fee yourself.

 

Read more on traveling by train at https://www.vr.fi/en/discounts-on-train-tickets/conscripts-discount

Travelling in bus, metro and tramway traffic

In service, your company-level unit will give you a long-duration code for booking trips in bus, metro and tramway traffic on trips available on the Matkahuolto Trips & Tickets mobile app.  The long-duration code is intended only for booking trips for leaves and assigned travel relating to military service (not for travel in evenings off, for example). 

The trips have to be booked before boarding the vehicle.  You are allowed to have two round trips reserved simultaneously.  When travelling, you must wear the Defence Forces leave uniform and carry your conscript card. 

You will be able to make reservations using the Trips & Tickets mobile app that you can download on your phone from an application store (Google Play / App Store) free of charge.  Enter the long-duration code you received from your company-level unit into the application for booking a free trip.  Note that train tickets must be purchased separately using the VR Matkalla mobile app, so you have to filter VR train trips out of the application.