PAPERMILL PROPERTY / FINLAND
when we were driving along the motorway to the next malls dumpsters, i saw a strange pier in the distance...i looked like it was abandoned and the useles columns had some magig effect on me, so i asked my friends (neu+voksi) to join me for a walk the next day...after crossing the motorway, we came to the gated property of the papermill, but the main gate was wide open, so we just walked in...the videocameras at the gate were discovered much too late by our lazy eyes, and so we made no efford to hide in any way. the "we are just tourist"-excuse would surely have worked in case of trouble...when we arrived at the pier we spread out and made our examination of the rotten structure, it was made half of concrete with a lot of serious cracks and half of woodpanels wich were really rotten on some parts and all over the pier were young (maybe 5year old) birch trees growing. it is a very nice spot, from where you have a good view at the town of tampere. in the other direction we could spot a churchlike tower hidden in the trees, the chimneys of the papermill, a red brickhouse and a small building on a raft.
so we moved on the see what more we could find, but we where unlucky with the weather that day, it was gray in gray and after a while it even started to rain. when we reached the red brick house by the lake shore, we found out that it was actually two buildings. we entered the first one trough an open window, and walked around the empty rooms. in one corner i found some old flyers against the factory, showing a drawn human head with a gasmask and the smoking chimney of the papermill in the backround and in the room close to the waterfront there was a poster of the local workers-union-newspaper, but much more to find here exept the wonderful paint peeling off the walls.
next to the building we just left was another one, wich looked more like a house for the living and not the working ones...sadly my friends left me at this point because the rain was starting to get heavier, and we hadn't proper raingear. so i went to the other house alone, it looked also abandoned from the site i came ,but i wasn't really sure. but when i walked around it i found the main door and the cellar open. at first i went into the cellar (maybe because i have a stronger interest in the "world going on underground") i expected to find a sauna, but instead it was a small room with shelves and a lot of rotting files. most of them were somekind of forest-statistics yearbook called "folia forestalia", wich was printed in finish and english. i took on of them to read it and it was from 1968. besides the papers in the shelves the was one cupboard full of empty sirup-bottles. when i went upstairs i found a very nearly collapsed floor in the entryarea, but couldn't detect any way to other parts of the cellar. inside the first level of the house i found only empty room with the beloved peeling paint and dusty windows. one room had an isolated door with smeared bloodstains on it. i guessed that someone has hurt him/herself during the vandalization of a wall in that room( maybe also searchin for the secret entry to the hidden cellar rooms.) a narrow stair lead to the upper level, where i found a map on the floor, wich showed forest sections, i guess. in an other room a trapped bird died and or was killed by other animals and from the balcony i had a partly blocked view on the other building with the pier behind it. i also found a lot of old industry newspapers from the 70ies and more maps in the attic.
on my way to the belltower i saw on the horizon i found some more dead birds, mainly seagulls. sadly the property with the tower was growded with some workers(?) and a patroling security guy, so i made my way around this area and went further to the raft, we also spotted from the pier, along strange looking trees. unfortunately i had to discover that the bridge to the aft was destroyed. any way i was better not to get to close to the nesting-place of another big seabird wich seemed to be located inside the red hut on the raft...by the shore i found some ramains of it's last snack on a rock. when i walked on i came to a stinking place were some drains from the factory were spilling their (for sure) poisonous "waters" into the lake...someone already marked that point with a sparaycan. i went on and found another containerlike little house, this time with open doors and a very minimalistic but still beutiful interior. in front or better under the building was somekind of pier again, but it was leading in the opposite direction from the lake into a stinking swamp with the factory in the background. a strange thin was that the pier had somekind of tunnel underneath wich lead to the lake. it was made of wood and the discusting sludge frome the swamp was leaking in trough the woodpanels. i did not went in.
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