Deserted Finland

Business Took Me To A Friend Again Part V

You know, sometimes you hear such strange stories, that you have to see them with your own eyes.

Back in the very early 20th century a railway was built over the lake Kallavesi in Savonia. In 1932 a road was added next to the railroad.

As this was the main (and only) route to the North From Kuopio, the bridges soon became crowded. The connection was replaced with a four lane road in 1965. The old steel bridges from 1932 were removed as whole and stored on an island near the newer bridges.

The rumor had it, that the bridges were then stored in a nearby island, where a forest had grown around them in the 58 years, which had passed since their removal. This sounded so crazy, that I had to go take a look.

It wasn’t just a rumor. There they were.

The bridges were in a surprisingly good condition considering that they were 91 years old and had sat here for 58 years.

I doubt that they will ever be used again, though.

The trees have grown pretty tall during the decades. They now completely surround the bridges. You have to know where they are in order to find them.

But still. Would there be a deck, I’d ride my summer car over them.

Quite a discovery!

Business Took Me To A Friend Again Part IV

A table. Original use unknown.

Gardening gloves and stuff.

Everything was left as it was when the garden closed.

And even a bag of soil. Wonder, if something would still grow out of that.

Another table.

A calendar from 1998.

There were even cold rooms. And a box of flowers to be protected from the cold.

A corridor.

I don’t know what that was. And maybe I don’t even want to.

There was even cement.

And fairly old bookkeeping.

The tablecloths were of course flower patterned.

A phone book from 1999, the last year of the operation of the garden company.

The items that the offer doesn’t include.

The final views from the garden. It will eventually be replaced by a residential area, but that is in the future. For the moment it still stands.

Business Took Me To A Friend Again Part III

The third location of our evening adventure was again a trip I had received from Tinder. My former date and current friend told me that there was an old market garden just next to her grandparent’s home. She gave the coordinates, and off we were again.

And there it is. Opened in the late 1940’s, the garden closed down for good in 1999. Apparently nothing has been here since.

I’ve again removed parts of the company name to make the place less recognizable.

In we go then.

This is what more than 20 years of vandalism look like.

A flower receipt – from a completely different place hundreds of kilometers away.

The mess was present in every room.

Old account statements from 1989. I’ve removed the info of the bank and the company, but it is noteworthy, that there were 70 000 marks on the account. Business was thriving!

Another dark and messy back room.

Gardening instructions and guides.

A magazine of apartment ads from the 1990’s.

A forest was slowly growing around the poor building.

Staff only.

The greenhouses had been behind the store area. There had been several of them, but they had all been demolished before 2010.

Judging by the condition of this remaining stub, the greenhouses may also have collapsed themselves.

Moving back towards the remaining section of the building to conclude this exploration.

Business Took Me To A Friend Again Part II

Our second location of the day was familiar to me from an earlier visit to the town. It was a former plywood mill, which I had last visited in 2021.

Here it is, and it looks pretty much the same.They’ve completed the new fire station, which is visible in the right corner of the photo.

Overlooking the yard. We weren’t really sure, if something was going on here or not, so we decided not to go there.

Instructions on finding the location of the fire plug inside the building.

The signs of Lemminkäinen are still in the area. The company hasn’t existed since 2018.

The more modern part of the complex are still in use. This one might be one of them.

Looking back. The new fire station is to the left.

I didn’t expect to find a way in. I was right. But the adventure was far from over.

Business Took Me To A Friend Again Part I

In the early days of June my bosses sent me to yet another business trip to Eastern Finland. I was to write two articles, one about a company and one about a construction project.

I started early in the morning and drove my summer car to the company, interviewed the CEO and continued to the city where the construction project was being carried out. As that interview was only going to be the following morning, I checked in to a hotel.

As it so happened, my friend was doing her summer internship in this town. Like the previous summer, she jumped in and we headed towards new abandonments.

And it didn’t take very long for us to find one. I had seen it through a train window many times.

And here it is. As the building was located inside the fence of the local rail yard, I figured, that it must have housed railroad staff.

The only way in was through a window. It brought us straight into a kitchen.

“I am really depressed, but maybe I’ll heal if it’s meant to be”.

This is heartbreaking.

Looks like a toilet door to me.

As the windows were blocked, it was fairly dark inside.

The place has been abandoned for a long time. Graffiti is visible on the windows way back on Google Maps photos from 2009.

The original fireplace was still there.

There was a big silver graffiti in one of the dark rooms.

Another shut window. Janna has tagged the radiator.

Heading towards the light. The washing machine isn’t that old.

The porch and the main entrance.

And finally the kitchen again.

A crudely drawn ladybug on the wall.

And finally the cottage again from the outside. Although there was a small fire in the house in 2024, it seems to be still standing.

When Tiktok Came To Town Part V

I bought what I needed to. Before heading home I decided to drive out to check on a location, which had looked interesting, when I had passed it on my previous adventure with a friend.

Interesting? Indeed. Promising? Most definitely.

But it never fulfilled its promise. I check these locations around once a year, and back in the spring of 2024 there was an arsonist or several of them in the area. First burned a storage building on this lot, then another building next to this one and finally a week later this one.

But you’ll hear from the arsonists later. Because June is right behind the corner. And the season is only just starting.

When Tiktok Came To Town Part IV

After exploring the two waterworks’ staff houses, I headed west. I needed to buy something for my car and all the most accessible places to do that were outside Helsinki.

On my way to the store I decided to check, whether anything had happened with this old and long since abandoned farm I had discovered way back in 2021.

Well shut.

The same applied to the second house on the lot.

As this will be my fourth summer touring Finland, I have quite a list of places I want to gain access to. That means, that there will be many catch up posts like this in the future.

When Tiktok Came To Town Part III

My cousin had only told me about the row house. The information I had gotten didn’t include the block of flats next to it. Their location was so strange and their architecture so identical, that it was almost immediately certain, that even these had something to do with the water purification plant.

Vandalism was extensive, and it wasn’t too difficult to gain access.

It looks like they tried to fix the damage at first but soon gave up.

I skipped the basement as usual.

Even the apartments were pretty well accessible.

At least they had enough cupboards.

The apartments had balconies facing the back yard.

So the day came when I couldn’t tell the difference between a hair product and toothpaste. It turned out that it was the latter.

Exploring the first kitchen. The mess next to the oven used to be its glass door.

And the first bathroom. Most of the things on the walls were now long since former.

The most exciting moment of the exploration: someone drove on the driveway with a noisy race car and parked there. I’m always a bit scared of encountering people inside these buildings, but this time they left without disturbing me.

The place was actually pretty dull. Big empty rooms decorated with very standard materials.

The parking lots were about to be cleaned.

There were big pieces on some of the walls.

Looks like a former bedroom to me.

Another look at the balcony door of this apartment.

This kitchen was much more old fashioned than the previous one.

They had taken samples from the floors probably to see if the building contained asbestos or not.

That was the downstairs. Ready to go up.

The tiny windows were a nice feature of the stairway.

The upstairs. For some reason the inner doors to the apartments had been screwed shut.

There wasn’t much else to see than the body of an old bike hanging from a hook.

And there wasn’t much to see here after this adventure. Both the row house and this block of flats were demolished in 2023.

When Tiktok Came To Town Part II

The cupboard contained different solutions to treating wood. Apparently the resident had a hobby – or just wanted to keep their terrace in shape.

I think the answer is more on the hobby side.

A second bathroom. What luxury!

The apartments really were large for being staff apartments.

The small cloakroom.

And so I am outside.

The row house contained only three apartments. I’ve already explored A, B wasn’t open. Let’s see what’s up with C.

Bingo!

The kitchen layout was identical to the previous apartment. Materials here were more old fashioned, though.

A note on the table says, that they have agreed to get their final stuff out a bit later than instructed. That happened back in 2022.

But the layout of this apartment was a bit different. This one included a walk in closet.

The living room.

And the first bedroom. This apartment was identical to the first one.

The second bedroom.

The bathroom of this apartment was much older and there even was a tub.

The curved shape of the radiator was fairly interesting.

So much for this location. The house was demolished late in 2023.

But there was more.

When Tiktok Came To Town Part I

In the early 2020’s Tiktok became popular in Finland. I’m such a boomer, that I have stuck to Instagram and haven’t even become a Snapchat native. Many of my friends, however became active tiktokers. Whenever they encountered urbex-related content in the app, they often started giving me tips.

This one came from my cousin, who told me, that she had seen a video of an abandoned and completely thrashed row house. She even had the address for me. I was a bit surprised, because the buildings were located in an area on the border of Vantaa and Helsinki, where there were very little houses and most of them were one family houses. Right next to the houses was a huge water purification plant.

And that also explained the house. It had been built along with the plant in 1959 as apartments for the municipal waterworks staff. Later it had become ordinary municipal rental apartments. They were in need of renovations and a new area of one family houses had been zoned on the lot. The house was emptied in 2022 and was awaiting demolition.