If you’ve been following me for a longer time, you will probably have realized, what my plan for 2022 was. Surprise, surprise, it was exactly the same as in 2020 – to visit all current and former municipalities in Finland during one summer.
Why I wanted so badly to do this, I don’t know. Perhaps it is the same reason, why I travel year after year to same locations trying to enter them until I succeed. When I want to do something, I attempt until I succeed.
I knew I wanted to do this already, when I returned my previous summer car to its owner. I had spent the winter trying to figure out the best possible car model to reach my goal, but also studying old maps of Finland. I made a list of old public buildings in remote locations, villages with industrial locations or railway stations and added them to my list of known abandoned buildings from beforehand. Already by March I had started planning a route. I aimed for a jackpot this summer: The Grand Tour De Finland and the urbex summer of all time.
But as customary I wanted to give myself some time to get to know my car and its flaws to hear, which noises were normal and which alarming. I started with the former municipalities of the capital region, which were merged to Helsinki way back in the 1940’s.
And there was a lot to be seen there, too.
This here is a former public school, which last was used to educate fire and ambulance rescue staff. The school moved away in 2013, and the building has been abandoned ever since. It is owned by a property developer, who is planning to build two new blocks of flats on the yard and renovate the old building to luxury apartments.
I first learned of this place, when I was dating one of its neighbours some five months earlier. We always discussed about exploring this place, but stopped seeing eachother before we could find a way in.
I couldn’t find a way in this time. But after having seen the building with my own eyes, it was definitely on my list of places.