The sociological interest in prison has traditionally focused on common feature and the main attention have been on the more restrictive and closed prison regimes (Liebling 2004; Crewe 2007). In the last 10 years, this has changed partly because of John Pratts two-parted article “Scandinavian exceptionalism in an era of penal excess”. The shift has led to an interest in the qualitative differences that exist between different kinds of prison regimes, and has led to awareness about the fact that a prison is not just a prison (Crewe 2011; Crewe, Liebling & Hulley 2014). This article is about the open prison: a regime that plays a big role in the Nordic prison practices. In the article, I am investigating how inmates experience the transition from a closed to an open prison regime, and how it feels to serve time in a regime without prison walls. In addition, I am looking at how inmates experience their possibility to take part in the outside society. The empirical foundation is based on interviews and a six-month long period of doing fieldwork in an open prison in Denmark.