My friends often ask me, how I find all these locations. I could reply with a song from my early 20’s: Read All About It.
Of course this song has nothing to do with abandoned houses, but its title does. I mostly read about them. Every week I do a Google search on demolition plans in Finland, and so I find places, which might be of interest. I put them on my shortlist and whenever I get the chance, I’ll pay the places a visit.
Often I am too late, often I manage an entry. And then there are cases like the regional Swedish speaking vocational school campus in Porvoo. I read about it being demolished, and as I was heading eastwards anyway on my next day off, I decided to take a small detour.
The buildings had been built in different stages since the 1950’s. This dormitory building looks like it’s from the 1960’s or 1970’s. Demolition work has already started and the area has been sealed off. I decided to start walking around the area to see, if the men at work had been lazy in building their fences.
A-ha! a few hundred metres back the main road, and a gate had been left open. This reminded me of my crazy drunken adventures on the demolition site of newspaper Kaleva.
It soon turned out that they had progressed pretty rapidly with the demolition. One large building was already more than halfway down.
The dormitory building also seen in the first picture can be seen in the left corner of this one. The yellow building in the middle is probably the main building. As the nearest building was almost demolished, I reckoned the two ones further away would be most interesting, so I started to head towards them.
Reaching them proved difficult. The most direct route was cut off by demolition rubble and a broken building. The only way was to try to go behind it, and that’s where I headed with determined steps.
Until I saw a one family house not too far away with its lights on.
Until I heard a large dog start barking by the house.
That was when I ran back to my car and drove straight away. And when I came back some time later, the place was gone.