Entering another room, which has clearly been a kitchen.
Well, this clearly has been the main kitchen of the place.
There have even been wine glasses.
And most of the floors have been demolished here, too.
That looks like evidence. Of what?
Moving on inside the building, still avoiding weak spots of the floor.
This has probably been the main entrance.
And this has probably been the restaurant.
Well, somebody has done the dishes.
The place was actually quite a mess.
After the water damage, a lot of stuff must have been just stuffed in here.
What a cozy place to enjoy an occasional pizza. Or a drink.
A painting on the wall depicting a dinner somewhere else. Probably at a functionalistic building such as this one. It could really well have been that one.
Moving on. Looks a lot like the cloakroom and the toilets.
The other end of the restaurant was an even worse mess.
The main stairway up was covered with so much debris, that it was impossible to climb this way.
Now this was something of an unexpected discovery. My urbex friend told me about a former school closed decades ago and converted into a hotel. During the winter of 2014-2015 there was a massive water leak, which closed the place down. In 2016 the owner applied for a demolition permit for the historically important building because of the damage. The situation was a standstill.
The auxiliary building, which has formerly housed the toilets of the school.
Without further delay I am going in. The floors have been demolished after the water damage, which was pretty extensive.
Theh first hotel room. As you can see, no floor here.
The rescue plan. It has been made by hand.
A look back towards the entrance.
Another room. Still no floor.
The first toilet. It seems to have been built in the 1980’s meaning, that the building has been out of school use for quite a while.
Curtains.
Even the walls had been demolished to some extent. Either by the owners or vandals.
Another partially demolished room.
Yellow curtains here this time around.
Finally some solid floors.
And some stupid graffiti.
A beautiful lamp.
And more demolished floors along with some bags and a VHS player.
Another shower.
Moving around on the damaged floor was pretty slow.
Back at the entrance I first entered through.
Ads of the pizzeria located in the building back in the days.
That was all there was to explore behind the first entrance. Let’s find a second entrance.
Welcome to yet another interesting piece of Finnish real estate history. This here is the Zsar Outlet Village built right next to the border with Russia and opened in 2018. Its aim was to serve rich Russian tourists, who were a mainstay in Southeastern Finland back then.
It looks like a historical city, but it is just a replica. There’s a modern shopping center behind those walls.
And as you can already guess, the business model, which seemed good back in 2018 soon ran into spectacular trouble. First came the covid pandemic, which closed the border. Then Russia decided to invade Ukraine, which made the border even more shut. The company running the mall went into receivership already back in 2020, but was kept open. Less than half of the spaces were occupied in the summer of 2021.
The place was declared bankrupt in October 2022 with debts of more than 20 million. It was put up for sale.
As the place is controlled by the receiver, it is well guarded. I didn’t expect to find a way in, but still decided to document this strange monument.
And indeed the gates were well shut.
Next to the old facades was a parking lot with all kinds of modern things like electric vehicle chargers.
There are really no buildings like this in Finland. The place has entirely been designed to Russian taste.
The view from another locked gate. As I guessed, it was all shut.
The mall was auctioned in 2024. A buyer was found, but they never paid the agreed fee and so another auction was made. This time there was a German-Russian buyer, who had ties to Russian oligarchs and president Putin. It is now up to the security authorities to decide, if a permission to sell can be obtained.
When my friend tipped me about the former border control troop garrison, which I unsuccessfully visited, they told me that the building had a twin. It was another border control troop garrison and its fate was almost similar. It had been closed and sold to a Russian owner and abandoned after that.
However, my friend warned me, that there was something going on with the area. There were also other buildings in addition to the clearly abandoned garrison with broken windows and stuff. They had only managed to explore the garrison on their second attempt. During the first attempt they were approaching the area when a huge column of SUV’s with Russian plates loaded with women dressed in fur drove from there. My friends suspected, that this was an illegal brothel.
And that was exactly why I parked my car on a small path leading to a forest and decided to approach the area from the back. There were signs of video surveillance, yes, but there always are and they mean nothing.
When I finally reached the back yard of the building, I noticed, that it had been boarded shut just a few weeks after my friends had visited. This was the first oddity.
The second oddity took place just as I was taking this photograph. I heard a sound behind me. It sounded like someone was riding a scoot or a bike on a dirt road behind me. A sort of a rustle.
And when I reached the other side of the building and took this picture, the third oddity happened. The very loud scream of a swan echoed around the area. It was one single, long scream. And it repeated. The monotonous scream repeated at a fixed interval time and time again, and it was unnecessarily loud.
It wasn’t a swan. It was mechanical. It was a warning sound, but more importantly I don’t think that it was meant to scare me. It was a signal warning about me. When I realized the pattern of the scream, I ran. I ran straight to my car, drove away and parked a safe distance away on the parking lot of a long distance bus stop by a highway. There was definitely something going on in here, and I didn’t want to stay to find out what it was.
Here we are again. At the dairy processing plant, which I have been chasing since 2011, when it wasn’t even abandoned yet. But something has happened isnce the previous visit in 2022. Back then there was absolutely no graffiti on the facade. Now the entire place has been vandalized with large tags.
In addition to that the windows to the low wing have been smashed and covered.
I would really like to know how that one has been made. I mean how has one such graffiti beginner climbed up there and made that?
Moving on to the back side.
I am still longing inside. And still there is no way in. The large glass panel in the stairway seems to be on the verge of collapse by the way.
The remains of the chimney. The old building behind the dairy plant was still inhabited, and so I turned back. But the number of broken and open windows and graffiti clearly indicates, that the building is no longer in active use. Its deteriorating condition also indicates, that it may not be there for that long.
I’ve said it several times, but I’ll say it again. This place is my ultimate conquest. When I will eventually manage to enter it, I can retire.
Next my trip took me to a small rural village, where there is a large former prison. It was closed in 2011, and after that the place has hosted asylum seekers. I’ve been to the village several times to see if there is anything of interest. There hasn’t been yet.
One of the buildings, which caught my attention was a small, two storey functionalistic beauty from the 1930’s. Although clearly well renovated, it was almost in its original shape.
But this time something was different. The yard had become unkept and the building seems to have suffered some damage at least to the plastering of the wall. It looks like the beauty stands empty.
It was originally built as the club house for the prison workers in 1934. There was a kiosk, a post office, a ballroom for 77 people and a canteen. Upstairs were apartments. Throughout its life it served in this purpose, although the post office was converted into another apartment, when the post left the area in the 1990’s. All the way to the very end it was used to accommodate temporary workers of the prison.
And welcome yet again to a familiar location. Here we have a sawmill factory workers’ apartment building, which has been empty for years and already has a demolition permit.
I recently shared my previous photos from the same location to a local Facebook group and heard, that it had been converted to a clubhouse at some point. Important for the story, maybe, not important for the building’s sealed future.
Sadly the place remains well sealed and there is absolutely no way in. It is again a race between me and the excavator.
Now we’re arriving to a special location, because this is a former church. Yes, it doesn’t look like one, but it is one.
Built in 1954, it is actually technically not a church, as laws back then required an administrative decision to build one, and there was none. Yet it was used as a church for more than 55 years.
The place was closed in 2020 after investigations revealed issues with the building’s condition. As the shrinking congregation is constantly short of money, it was decided not to renovate it and demolition plans were pushed forward.
The back of the church contained apartments. It was more like an administrative building than a church, really.
A side entrance with notes informing about the closure of the church.
The windows included beautiful glass paintings. I hope they will be rescued if the demolition goes forward.
The main entrance to the church.
The other side of the building. The windows on the second floor are directly to the main hall.
You can see the glass windows through them.
The apartment wing. The layout hints at four apartments for church staff.
The roof has already started to suffer.
No point of entry, sadly. This would have been an interesting location.
That year I had read news about the demolition of a market garden in Imatra, just by the Eastern border. It was stated, that the demolition would start during summer, so I wasn’t really sure what would be left when I’d arrive.
The garden had existed since the 1950’s or the 1960’s according to aerial photos. It appears to have been closed in the 2010’s.
The yard was greatly overgrown. The greenhouses had already been demolished earlier, so I was mostly interested about the main building.
Which looked like it had seen better days.
The flower pots were the first thing reminding about the garden days.
The lot seemed a bit chaotic. It later turned out, that it contained a lot of plastic waste hidden underground.
But here we are inside the building.
The place was very primitive and in very bad shape. The last renovations had been done decades ago.
As you can see. This kitchen doesn’t fulfill modern standards.
The floor has vanished somehwere.
Somebody’s bike needs fixing.
The chair matches the earlier seen sofa.
The floor is bubbling and the light is magic.
Moving on deeper. The floor really wasn’t sound.
And I mean what I said about the floor.
That sure is a vintage fridge.
The kitchen of the second apartment was fairly colorful. There were several ones in the building.
Looks like a former bedroom. The floor again has holes in it.
Something’s eaten through it. It also has collapsed.
The inhabitant of this apartment has loved pink.
Leaving the second apartment.
I didn’t enter a third one. There was an active looking ashtray next to the stairs, which made me doubt, that somebody might still be occupying this place despite its horrible condition.
The glas says Stop! Demolition work and something, which is unreadable. I am not sure, if it tries to prevent people from entering or if it demands the stopping of demolition.
But nevertheless demolition started around a month later. A new road connection crossing a railroad was supposed to be built in its place, but as the border between Finland and Russia was closed, the construction was halted. The lot was fully empty by the summer of 2024.
Here we have an interesting builing. It looks like an ordinary home, but its window layout is a bit strange. I believe two of the two doors downstairs lead to apartments and the third one to a stairway upstairs, where there is a lobby and more apartments.
I originally spotted this building through a train window on a business trip on a route, which I take rarely, about once or twice a year. There were so many broken windows, that I determined, that the place was abandoned, which it was. Yet somebody is doing gardening and closing open doors.
Most of the neighbours are abandoned, too. Maybe somebody has a development plan.
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