September 2015. I travelled to Helsinki to watch Finland play Faroe Islands in the EURO 2016 qualification. I stayed at a friend’s couch and brought her a bottle of wine, she had thought wine would be nice, too, so there was plenty of it.
Back then I was pretty desperately in love with another friend of mine. The friend on whose couch I was staying told me, the time had come to confess.
“I won’t”, I said.
“I’ll make you drink until you will”, she said.
The morning dawned. Three bottles of wine were empty, I had confessed, gotten rejected and cried myself to sleep. I was only waking up and trying to grasp what had happened, when I got a message from another friend.
“Ok, boarding the bus now. I’ll be there in two hours.”
I and my friend realized we had invited a third friend of ours over for an adventure. And when we met her at the bus station we still had no idea what the adventure would be. I then suggested that we take the bus to see one of the most famous urban exploration targets in Finland, the Kruunuvuori villas. My friends said yes, and we were on our way.
We took a bus to the middle of nowhere, walked to the end of a suburban street and entered a thick forest without actually knowing what we’d find. Some charred remains soon revealed that we were on the right way.
Whatever it was, it is no more.
A trail of bricks leads to another burned down house.
The first house we found which was still standing. Barely.
It wasn’t safe to enter anymore.
Barely standing was a bit too much said.
A closer look at the ruin.
This one is barely recognizeable as a house.
Another fallen hut.
Time really has been harsh on these villas.
But what happened here? I’ll be releasing a second set of pictures along with the story of Kruunuvuori in my next post.