Bought By Mistake Part III

A lot of light switches were at the back of the cafeteria.

Another small kitchen. It looks like the roof or the window is leaking.

Glasses. I wonder, whether that package is rat poison or dishwasher detergent.

A lot of coffee has been made and consumed here.

Interesting cupboard doors. I don’t think I have ever seen any made of wired glass.

Sugar cubes.

This looks like I’ve suddenly teleported to the basement.

Which I probably did. I think I took the stairs in the end of the building and went all the way down. There was nothing to explore, so now I’m back in the cafeteria.

And now I’m in the other end of the building in the stairway, which I used to get upstairs. There’s a locked door at the top. I think there may have been an apartment there.

Looking down the end stairway.

Toilets downstairs, the sign says.

And this here is the middle stairway leading from the cafeteria to what I presumed to be the main entrance.

Which is here.

Toilets in what I believe was the main lobby.

The toilets. The striking red color is again from decades ago.

A comb. Model: old people.

Back in the cafeteria again.

And finally I am downstairs in a corridor with entrances to the business premises.

This is the only one that was accessible. It looks like an office.

And finally outside. The store featured a few posts back can be seen to the right of the picture.

Quite an exploration!

Bought By Mistake Part II

The lobby and café upstairs was what life in Finland looked decades ago. This over here is a real time capsule.

It was almost as if the 1960’s were still here.

That is where people have chosen their sandwiches, buns and cold drinks from.

Moving on to the hall, the heart of the activity in the building.

This was where the life in the village used to be. Even volleyball could be played here.

The stage even allowed concerts and plays to be held here.

There was a small storage room at the back.

I wonder, what all these things have been.

There could be up to 300 people in the room. Or 120, if they were seated. I’ve removed a lot of details from the papers to hide the location of the place.

A better look at the stage.

The stage contained the chairs, which were used by spectators. They sure were original from the 1960’s. The ceiling is also pretty nice!

A view of the hall from the stage.

Going backstage. There has been coffee served to the performers.

There was even an own toilet for the performers.

Moving on to the kitchen behind the cafeteria.

There was even a third stairway in this end of the building.

A view towards the stage from the back.

A small office room.

A phone book from 2003. In reality the place was abandoned long after this.

And so I am back in the cafeteria.

One more post to go from this location.

Bought By Mistake Part I

Just two houses away from the village store was the old association building of the village, which I had photographed from the outside back in 2021. Built by several associations to be used for their activities, the downstairs featured business premises. Originally there had at least been a bank, the last users were a kiosk, a barbershop and even a pharmacy.

This was the former kiosk.

I started circling the house hoping to find a way in this time.

The chimney looked sturdy. The building has probably used oil for heating.

The building was in a pretty bad condition. The facade was starting to fall off.

This is what looks like the main entrance. Notice the broken window.

The entrance has started to grow birches.

As in fact has the entire building.

At this point I heard a dog, and soon enough a lady emerged from the yard of the neighboring house asking what I was doing. I told her the truth. I explained, that I’m an urban explorer touring Finland and photographing abandoned locations and asked about the history of the building.

The neighbour told me, that the building had been bought by a foreign national living in the capital region. He thought that it was in the nearby town and after realizing its location, he just left it. The neighbour said that teenagers regularly broke in, and that’s why she approached me.

“Do you mind if I take a look if I can find a way in”, I asked.

“Try from the other side. That’s where they broke in last”, she replied.

Access approved. And surely enough there was a door ajar.

Bingo!

There was a small lobby here.

And a cloakroom, it seems.

Which looks more like a dressing room.

And it actually may have been one, because there were even showers. After all, people had been practising sports upstairs.

There were two toilets at the back. The floor is once again made of the familiar hexagonal tiles.

A look back towards the doors I came through. Maybe this was the main entrance after all.

Let’s head upstairs.

Welcome, the sign says.

There was a small lobby at the top of the stairs. But after that I encountered something almost unbelievable.

Which I will reveal tomorrow.

Killed By Authorities

Already during my previous visits to this village, I’ve noticed this old store. Judging by some of the color choices still visible, it has belonged to a chain called Siwa. An old Google Maps picture from 2009 confirmed this.

When I started searching for the store’s closing date, I ran into a surprising reason as to why this location is abandoned – it’s because of the authorities.

The storage building at the back.

Back in 2017 a company called Kesko bought the company running the chain of Siwa stores. The competition authorities ordered it to close or sell 60 of the locations so, that its market share didn’t grow too big. This one was one of them, because the village only had one other store left, a K-market run by Kesko.

Eventually Kesko only managed to sell 10 of the stores, and the demand of the authorities was dropped because the chain owning the Siwas would have gone bankrupt anyway. Yet the remainint 50 were closed and this one was one of them.

Since then vandals have found it and started breaking windows. I hope to find a point of entry in the coming years.

Some Towns Are More Effective Than Others

I told you earlier about finding the list of property strategies of municipalities and towns and using them to find abandoned properties destined for demolition.

Well, I had again encountered the list of a small regional town, which was losing people fast. I could determine, that some of the buildings had already been demolished, but there were still two, which I was hopeful about visiting.

The first of them was a former school from the mid 1970’s and abandoned for some time.

Unfortunately the only trace left of it was the basketball court. It was gone.

I next turned my attention to a 1930’s built business building, which had last housed a restaurant.

Even it had disappeared. I guess, that some towns concentrate on planning, while others actually act. I have to keep this in mind, when reading about projects in this location later on.

Still For Sale

The evening light brought me back to yet another familiar location – a regional hospital closed down in 2014. The previous time I had visited the place had been a year earlier, and that time I hadn’t been lucky in finding an entrance.

I wasn’t very hopeful this time, either, but I was ready for another walkaround.

You can only imagine, how longingly I am watching its windows.

But they all seem as intact as a year earlier.

Although it doesn’t look like it, the wing to the right is from the 1990’s, when the hospital was last enlarged.

You can clearly see, that it is made of precast elements.

In this photo it is even clearer.

Moving back towards the original buildings.

And behind the entire complex.

I’m now about halfway through, and everything is still intact. The 1960’s annex is visible up front.

The facade of the original part of the hospital.

It’s safe to say that the original one was far more beautiful than this one.

This, I believe, has been the main entrance back in the days.

The form of the building was fairly complex.

Even if I had gotten in, I might have gotten lost.

Garages downstairs.

And Christmas candles. A common sight in abandoned public buildings, as they are often closed for good around the New Year.

Almost gone around now.

The old apartment building of the medical superintendent.

And finally the main entrance with a beautiful red Volvo lurking at the parking lot. No luck this time.

In late 2024 the hospital was sold. Let’s wait and see what kind of plans the new owner has.

Only A Decade Too Late

The following location was a new one for me. It was yet another former sawmill area, one of several ones scattered around Finland, which used to live from its forests.

This one was founded in 1917 and became a rather large one. In its peak it employed 140 people, produced almost 60 000 m3 of lumber and made a yearly revenue of 33 million Finnish Marks.

The sawmill was still doing good in the early 1980’s, but in 1989 it was already considered outdated and went bankrupt. The sawmill buildings stood idle for several years before vanishing one after another.

In the latest aerial photos I saw, the power station and chimney still stood. I considered the power station an interesting location to explore and headed there.

Unfortunately the aerial photos were as outdated as the sawmill. What remained was the old, preserved chimney. Turns out that the power station had been demolished back in the early 2010’s.

Oh well…

Too Guarded For Me

And here we have the first glimpses of what I really was looking for when entering the transformation station. This here is a former school of some kind. Back in the days when I first visited the place, I had no clue what it was. I’ve since figured it out, though.

But figuring out or exploring the place didn’t happen just yet. Every door and entrance was intact. And in addition to that I could see cameras even from this distance.

I slowly backed away, made another note to my Excel about a future location and went my ways.

A Good Cover

My following location was an old education building of some sort located in the middle of nowhere. I had discovered it by using old maps, but was extremely unsure what it was and what was its current status.

As I never park my car in front of buildings I visit, always further away, I was doing the last bit by foot. I was just about to turn to the road leading to the complex with all the no trespassing signs, when I spotted a senior riding a bicycle on the village road. I immediately started photographing wheat fields.

The guy vanished behind a hill and I noticed a nice cover, where I could hide while they were passing.

And here we go, an abandoned transformation station.

The roof was already covered with plastic back in 2011, so this one hasn’t been in use in a long while.

The decay was evident.

Welcome inside. I think this one is the second station of this kind I am exploring.

I could have climbed upstairs, but I’m afraid of heights.

The signs on the wall state, where the cables have run.

The three differently colored lines are like from games, where you have to defuse a bomb by cutting wires in the right order.

Just a close up of the wall. This exploration was quickly over.

Still Scared Of The Criminal Minds

After the barbecue I continued my journey. And this here is another familiar location. It is the old block of flats built in the middle of nowhere for sawmill workers, which ended into the hands of organized crime. I’ve told its story before here.

Despite now looking completely abandoned and overgrown, I still didn’t go in for an exploration. Like I’ve said previously, I want to feel safe while exploring. And although the house doesn’t seem to be in any use, I didn’t want to encounter someone, who has come to check the property’s condition.

Maybe some day I will be brave enough!