I had changed jobs the previous autumn. This meant that I still didn’t have a full summer holiday. I got three weeks, and I decided to have them 2+1: two weeks around the largest folk music festival in the country and one week in August, when I was due to perform at a smaller town festival in the North.
As the Covid-pandemic was still on, the large festival was cancelled for a second year in a row. I spontaneously got myself another summer car and decided to embark on a two week tour of photographing abandoned buildings around the country. I again named it Tour De Finland, as that was what my epic attempt at visiting all former and current municipalities of Finland during the previous summer had been called.
So I created a list of abandoned places I knew and hadn’t yet visited, put them on a map, drew a route between the dots and left. I didn’t even get to my first intended location, when I spotted something of interest, parked the car and started carefully approaching.
And here we have it, the first photo of the summer roadtrip featuring a wobbly looking chair in the middle of nowhere.
Now this looks more like the thing.
A former petrol station. The colors and architecture made it look like a former Esso.
Well, I didn’t have to guess this time.
Access denied. First of all the door window was broken, but the door itself wasn’t unlocked. Secondly the place was full of tools and machinery making it look more like a storage than actually being abandoned. I backed off.
The petrol station first appears in 1968 aerial photos. In 1966 the same place was still a field, so it was built in 1967 or 1968. Apparently it was closed in 1996. It has since featured in a Finnish movie.
And according to Google Maps, the property has been for sale between 2018 and 2020. The sign doesn’t appear on my pictures, so either it has been sold since or the owners have given up.