Urban exploration in Finland.
Next to the other store was a smaller old business building, which already appears on aerial photos from 1948.
According to Google Maps photos from 2011 its upstairs apartments still looked inhabited.
The other side. It’s possible that even the downstairs business premises had been converted into apartments at some point.
After business use ended, the building was accessed through a single porch at the back.
Tags in empty windows. A familiar story. But no entry.
This time I find myself by the old main road in a small regional town. My friend, who has tipped me about several locations in Finland was visiting her relatives in the area and told me about an old store, which sat abandoned.
The main building and storefront were clearly abandoned, but there might have still been something going on in the storage wing. There was a car workshop at the back of the yard. There was definitely still something going on.
Is that a bottle of ketchup on the table?
There’s been a gym in the building.
The last inhabitants.
There were probably apartments upstairs. At least there were mailboxes.
The front of the store. Not a very successful exploration this time.
You already know the story, as I’ve told it so many times. I travel a lot by train, and I mean a lot. Until the spring of 2023 I did it weekly, and I accumulated around 60 000 kilometers on the tracks yearly. After that the mileage dramatically decreased, as I stopped going to my former home town on a weekly basis.
I had travelled the route so many times, that knew it by heart. I could look out of the restaurant car window in the middle of the night while being completely wasted, and within a minute I could locate where we were. That’s why I also knew the abandoned houses on the railside by heart. And had already visited many of them, some more successfully than others.
This time my location was a small and unremarkable yellow cottage, which I had been looking at the past four years. Its windows were smashed, its door was open. I was almost certain, that nothing could stop me from gaining entry number 30 that year.
Except the excavator. The house had still been there a month ago, but I guess a lot can happen during summertime.
The less glamorous part of the hobby.
Moving on to the next location, which I have already previously documented. This time it’s about the railway station residential area, I photographed in 2022. Since then two houses have been demolished and several renovated, the one I managed to enter still stands empty.
Along with the one abandoned one still standing, which I didn’t manage to enter the previous time. And that was the one, which I was interested in.
Still standing. Somebody had now switched off (or more likely broken) the lamp on top of the door. Nothing else had changed, though, so I’m going to have to have come back.
Like to so many other places visited during this summer of disappointment.
The following yearly check up was to a former mental asylum, which I had discovered back in 2021. I visited again in 2022 only to find out, that the former staff apartments had found new inhabitants.
Since then it had been on the news, that the owner plans Airsoft games to be played in the old main hospital. As nothing new had really appeared, I decided to check it anyway.
The gardener has become a bit lazy since last year, but the place still was intact. As the inhabitants were on the yard, I decided not to go further.
I guessed at this point, that I would need to remove the location from my list, but for some reason didn’t. And that proved to become quite the story.
But as this is an exploration diary, we are not there yet.
It was another day in the life of an an urban explorer and it looks like it was beginning with freshly made eggs.
Just kidding. I was actually approaching another house, which I’ve seen through train windows. It was right next to a very small regional railway station, which closed decades ago. The village remained very small, and that’s why to my surprise, two older ladies illegaly crossed the rails. (It is illegal in Finland to cross rails in other than marked spots). One of them pointed out the eggs to me.
But before we got there, they were rather curious about me. So I showed them the house, and asked, if they knew anything about it. They said, that the godfather of one of them owned it years ago, but it had been empty for decades. A local entrepreneur had bought it it and had some plans for it, but they never materialized.
“Do you think he’ll mind if I’ll have a look”, I wondered.
“Let’s not tell him, so he’ll probably never even get to know”, the other one said. I considered this another green light.
There was the house, but now I was faced with my first problem. It had been abandoned for so long, that no road, whatsoever could longer be found. The yard was very overgrown and a deep trench ran between the house and the railway area.
Well, time to test my durability.
I was scratched by all kinds of plants, bitten by every imaginable insect and almost fell down one trench, but I made it.
Nobody had indeed lived here in ages. At least the interior looked like it.
A very old magazine. The theme is Christmas.
10 kg of cucumbers from the other side of Finland. This co-operative was merged with a larger one in 1980.
Another mystery. A bottle of cod liver oil from a pharmacy again hundreds of kilometers away. It looks like there is something left.
The corner of the room contained some old clothes.
The ceiling was already in such a condition, that support was needed.
Rust had recolored the ovens.
That’s all that’s left of the curtains.
Looks like an old pancake pan there, on the floor.
And all kinds of old kitchen stuff.
The headline from decades ago asks, how we are going to do in these times of economic changes. A valid question still all these decades later.
A newspaper from 1977. The appearance of the other papers looks about the same so I guess they are from the same era.
One of the few pieces of furniture left.
Oh, I take that back. It was all just stored here at the back.
I wonder, what has been read here.
An article explaining, why a postal code is needed. The national mail company was starting mechanical sorting. This wasn’t just yesterday.
The year was 1971.
A social guide? I wonder what that is.
The window overlooking the overgrown front yard with railway tracks in the background.
“God is love.” Well, I am in a fairly religious area.
A flower drawing by an unknown young artist.
And one final look at the primitive kitchen and the huge baking oven. There was even an upstairs, but the state of the ceiling didn’t make it worth a visit.
This time the effort was paid off. And every time I watch this building from the train windows, I feel satisfaction.
The following location from my neverending Excel. It is the village store featured here for the first time in photos from 2022.
According to the sign in the window, the place is still for sale. No buyers have appeared, though.
It looks like even the for sale sign has lost its hope.
This end of the building had lost more paint than the others. This is the Eastern facade, so the sunrises have done this.
The door visible in the picture was open, but the building had drooped just enough for it to be jammed. Again no entry.
And there never would be. When I got back in 2025, the building had been demolished. End of story.
Welcome yet to another familiar location. This here is the co-operative store featured earlier in 2020.
Maybe this view is more familiar.
How can there be trees growing on the balcony?
The building seen from the other side.
And the back of the building. There’s been another building attached to this part of it, just like in the similar location photographed in here.
No entry. But hey, at least the soil is for sale!
So yet another one of the closed railroad stations, which I’ve featured during the previous days. There’s even a train of the latest model of Finnish locomotives passing at this very moment.
Like the previous ones, this building was completed in 1886. Passenger traffic ended in 1990, much later than at the others.
And indeed this building is very similar to the ones previously featured.
The railside. But wait a second, there’s something different here.
And that is an open door.
This here is the minimally small waiting room with the ticket booth.
And this here is apparently, where the tickets were sold up until 1985.
The room behind the ticket counter. A desk and a bed.
Well, it wasn’t a bed. It was a couch.
And the main circuit board was in quite a funny place.
This room had probably been a waiting room back in the days. And there had been a beautiful lamp.
Somebody had tried to start a fire, but luckily it failed.
There was a map of the area on the wall.
And this is the staff side of the counter.
The back room of the back room. The light was on in the following room, and it seemed, that the electricity was still on, and I was again wondering, if the building was still used for something. I decided to leave.
But not before taking one more picture.
Back in the 1960’s there was a big scandal in Finland. It was revealed, that several companies produced margarine using grease coming from where it wasn’t supposed to come from. It came from offal and sometimes even slaughtered cats. The case is known as the Margarine Scandal.
The grease was produced in several factories around the country, but one of them was located in this building.
I’m not really sure, what happens here these days. The place looks pretty decayed, but apparently it is still serving as a storage for vehicles. I’ve driven past it several times, even in my childhood and would love to visit. Perhaps this is the next version of my urbex dream after I have conquered the dairy plant.
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