My former boss has a Midsummer tradition. Yearly their family and a family they know go to my boss’ summerplace to eat, bath sauna, swim and chill. And in the past years we have had an even stranger tradition: I crash in the middle of this tradition. After visiting the town hall, I called them and asked if I could pay them a visit. As they are all very kind hearted people, I was instantly welcomed.
And when I got there in a half an hour, the sauna was already warm. We took a bath, I took a swim in the nearby lake (which I rarely do, the water is almost always too cold for me) and finally I was invited to dinner. As always they invited me to stay for as long as I wanted to, as always I declined, because adventures didn’t wait.
And in we are. This is the lobby of the town hall, where time seems to have stopped.
The main stairway. It wasn’t yet the time to go there.
Instead I started exploring the office rooms downstairs. There was very little light, so I knew already, that the photos wouldn’t be any masterpieces.
A lot of the wall area had been used for pinning things up.
The map of the area displaying the old coats of arms of the municipality of Mynämäki. The coat of arms was changed when the municipality merged with Mietoinen. The merger took place before the town hall was abandoned. The maps weren’t changed, though, it seems.
Like I said, the photos weren’t classics this time.
I suppose the town accountants have worked here.
The curtains are almost as vintage as everything else in the house.
The sign of important people back in the days.
Greeted by a dark corridor.
The files had been thoroughly emptied. No secrets here.
The room sizes varied greatly. Some were big for several people, others were one person cubicles like this. Or at least I hope that no more than one person was forced to work here.
And a larger room for a change.
That’s not the place for curtains.
Even the curtains were full scale vintage.
They had emptied the place pretty well before closing it.
And really the most exciting things were empty files.
An old shelf with obsolete electronics, and the old, municipal safe.
They didn’t bother to empty their collection of one VHS cassette.
So they were really using cord phones and watching VHS cassettes here all the way until 2011, when the place was emptied?
The amount of empty files was staggering.
Time to go see, what’s upstairs…
… in the following post.