When traveling by train in Finland what can I expect from these options?

Question

I am in the process of booking some train tickets for my trip in Finland.

Apart from technical problems in selecting the specific seat, I have a few questions about the available options, since I am not familiar with Finnish trains.

• I suffer from a mild form of dust allergy / hay-fever. Would it be appropriate for me to select an "allergy seat" or is it reserved for more severe allergies?
• a seat upstairs from the restaurant is available, is that car the only one with two floors, or all cars have an upper seating floor? (I hope to be able to enjoy the scenery a bit, and I guess the upper floor would be more suited for that)

edit to answer this comment:

could you tell what route/service you're planning to take, since train configurations can differ significantly.

I am mostly looking at the leg between Rovaniemi and Tampere, some of the options have a change in Oulu where the above options are available. I also plan other legs, but they will be significantly shorter (Turku, and then Helsinki) so it will be less of a problem if I cannot see much outside.

Answer 1

I'm not Finnish, but I've travelled around there once very recently, and had a relatively similar experience, so I feel that I should be able to have a stab at answering. Don't take my word as gospel though!

• I actually managed to book the hypoallergenic seats by accident (when I went through the normal seat booking process and selected a compartment, it turned out it was a hypoallergenic compartment). I had no problems with ticket inspectors, etc., and I found nothing on the website (once I realised what I'd done when the confirmation came through) to say that it was only for severe sufferers (I also suffer from mild hayfever). It also seems to say roughly the same on the Finnish site, at least according to Google Translate. So from what I can find, I suspect you'll be all right on this.
• As others have stated, if the restaurant is double-decker, all coaches are likely to be double-decker, though I don't think this is guaranteed (I can find photos online of mixed sets of single and double decker coaches). In any case, I would suspect the seating plan when selecting your seat would make this clear; it did for me at least. Note though that the hypoallergenic compartments are at the coach ends, at a middle height (higher than the lower deck but lower than the higher deck). Compared to the lower deck the upper deck is probably at an advantage, but compared to the "middle deck" where the compartment is, I'm not so sure. To be honest, I really enjoyed being in a compartment (along with a friend), for the privacy aspect if nothing else, so I'd recommend that experience, at least if you're travelling with one or three other people!