Research has increasingly attempted to uncover the mechanisms of hostility and hospitality towards refugees in the wake of the 2015 refugee crisis. There seems to have emerged a unanimity that mere exposure to asylum seekers and refugees increases hostility in natives, but more and more research points in the direction that prolonged contact between natives and refugees increases hospitality, in line with the contact hypothesis. However, the literature is inconclusive about when and where contact happens. I argue that levels of urban density are an important confounder when it comes to measuring contact: refugee arrivals are more visible in a village than in a city, and this fact is likely to determine the level of exposure to refugees among natives. This paper tests this assumption by running an original block sampled survey in Finland among rural and urban dwellers who as-if-randomly either witnessed or did not witness asylum seekers' arrivals in their municipality. Results show that reactions to asylum seekers are more favorable in rural areas than in cities and this spills over to favorable attitudes to immigration in general. Contact, economic interests, and lower levels of crime in rural areas all contribute to these differences.