Urban Exploration, Swimming & Nerding Around
When I woke up today, it was surprisingly cold and sunny outside. One of those nippy and bright winter days which have been in REALLY short order for the last three years or so. The previous week had left me feeling like a roadkill warmed twice over. All the hassle with the apartment and the fever, dealing with the insurance companies, searching for a new flat and trying to do some work at the same time had left me feeling pretty damn dead. Susi and I had to skip my little brother’s superhero themed masquerade party, where we had planned on going as Rorschach and Black Cat (although my current physique would have fit Nite Owl far better). Alas, all the hassle shot down that idea.
Right from the moment when I opened the bedroom curtains a veritable tsunami of stir craziness hit me – there was no question that some outdoorsy activities were in order. Hiking in Nuuksio would have been nice, but by the time I had got my gear together and hauled my ass to the location, the sun would have set. The second choice was to do some light urban exploration after a long pause.
On my way to work I walk past this abandoned silo, which is a pretty well known place for UE enthusiasts, but also for junkies, graffiti people and consequently, the authorities. The place is closed more tightly than George W. Bush’s asshole, but I decided to check it out on my way to the day’s main target.
A view of the silo from the street.
A view from the back of the building. All the entrances are plugged tight and part of the building is actually covered with sheet metal from ground floor to the top.
A view straight up.
I wasn’t really expecting to gain entry, but there was a faint glimmer of hope that someone else would have decided to break into there earlier. The basic idea of urban exploration is “leave only footprints”, which means that you don’t break anything, mess with stuff, steal stuff or generally don’t act like a dick. Apparently earlier some explorer had found a nice “secret door” which some homeless or a junkie had built, but it has apparently been plugged.
My main target was a big freight dock which was closed down recently. There wouldn’t be that much to see, just huge warehouses, some cranes and administrative buildings, but the weather and the lighting was pretty photogenic. Thinking smartly I was dressed in my work clothes, so I wasn’t really equipped to vault over barbed wire obstacles or crawl through holes in chicken wire fences. I treated the trip more as a “casing the joint” type of thing.
Approaching the area from the north I ran into a guard booth, which kind of surprisingly was occupied. One thing some people don’t realise is that social skills are handy in UE. Security guards are just people and if you are not up to something nasty, often they can be reasoned with. Of course, you get these morons who are still on a testosterone trip over getting a baton and a tear gas canister, but that’s a different thing. I know some long time security pros who get this really tired look in their eyes when morons like these are mentioned.
So, I basically just asked if I can go in and take some photos. Although the guard wasn’t supposed to let anyone in, he told me it’s ok if I stay within a line of sight from the guard booth. This regrettably meant that I couldn’t go and roam in the buildings, but at least I got some photos.
A railroad leading into the loading docks.
Under the eastern main route out from Helsinki. The left one is for the subway, the right one is for cars.
A view from up high on the bridge. You know you are a nerd at heart when crates like this make you think of FPS game maps.
Another view from the bridge, or rather the cliffs next to it.
"And this is a photo of the research station gamma in Siberia... no wait, is this Antarctic... ah, sorry, my bad, this is Helsinki downtown."
It didn’t really matter that I didn’t get into the area this time, since I managed to find a way in that requires the least amount of trying to drag my pudgy body over two meter high fences topped with barb wire. So, one of these nights I’ll have to steal in and check out the actual buildings.
From the docks I walked to Kurvi, where I jumped into a tram that took me to the swimming centre I frequent. I made a decision to try and go swimming twice a week before our trip to the Red Sea. Swimming has been something I was kind of able to do, but in practice it took a shitload of learning to do well enough to matter. This learning took place last spring, when Susi and I went to the scuba diving course. One of the requirements was to be able to swim for 250 meters – my record being 50 meters of dog paddle.
I seldom get the experience of learning a completely new skill really fast. Last spring the first time I went to the pool I managed to do 25 meters of breast stroke and in total 250 meters of splashing forward with a pause every 50 meters. It took me a month to reach the stage where I swam for one kilometer non-stop and stopped not because I was too tired, but because I got hellishly bored. My current aim is to pick up my swimming speed from the rather pathetic one kilometer per hour – just because I get bored so goddamn easily that I’d need to get the kilometer done in half an hour.
In any case, here I am at home now, feeling relaxed from the outdoors stuff and exercise. Now it’s the time to cook some burgundy roast and fire up either one of the consoles or WoW, haven’t decided on which one. Nerdiness is afoot in any case this evening.
Next week – going to be a nude model in underwater art photographs, learning how to dive with Nitrox, hopefully a ton of apartment showings and whatever life throws our way.
Exploring Herttoniemi
When I left the office today, the weather was a bit too sunny and I was feeling a little too jittery to go straight to home. Instead I decided to go and pick up a geocache a couple of kilometers away, near a Bronze Age burial site next to Itäväylä road. Cycling there was very pleasant and the cache was in a fun place to find, although the GPS gave me some trouble. I’m mostly happy with the Garmin Colorado 300, but the electronic compass acts rather funky a bit too often. You have to recalibrate it quite regularily, plus for some reason even minor vibration (such as holding it in your hand that’s resting on a bicycle handlebar) makes it go wonky.
A Bronze Age burial site next to one of the busiest roads in Helsinki. The site is basically just a huge pile of rocks.
I also found someone's lodgings. Nobody seemed to be home, so I peeked in.
Pages from porn magazines, a couple of tent mattresses, an ashtray and empty boxes of ice-cream etc. Looked more like a shack built by kids than the lodgings of a bum.
When I found the cache, I was still feeling energetic and the next caches were only a bit over a kilometer away, so I went looking for them. A very nice thing about geocaching is that it takes you to places where you’d otherwise never go. Going for walks without a point bores me to tears and I rarely go cycling without any aim, but geocaches give you a good excuse to poke your nose into all kinds of places. I used to live in Herttoniemi, on the northern side, but Herttoniemenranta-area really surprised me. It was a completely different world from the area of Siilitie – clean houses, nice yards, lots of kids and a distinct smell of money.
I found one of the caches, the second one was inside a dog park, where I didn’t want to go and the third one was right next to a very busy road with a lot of people (it’s a really fucking cold day in hell before I start calling bystanders ‘muggles’). The people walking past made searching for the cache without revealing its spot pretty hard, so I left it for another time.
Herttoniemenranta seaside has nice tallish cliffs, which I’ve been meaning to check for some time now. When I returned, I arrived handily right above them – on the other side there is a harbor, which is closed with fences and barbed wire. The cliffs were surprisingly clean. I was expecting a ton of old beer bottles and stuff like that after the summer, but either it had been cleaned or it didn’t attract that many people. From the top of the cliff I noticed some old rusty barges and to my surprise a smaller tug-like boat that was huddling quite close to the cliffs.
The barges were rusty and massive. They were behind a serious looking fence, which I didn't want to try and cross in full daylight.
It was full of clothes hung up to dry, boxes of plates and other dishes also set up to dry and so on. There was a gap in the fence on top of the cliff and I just had to go through and climb down to check the boat out. The it was anchored next to a concrete ledge on the bottom of the cliffs – surprisingly there didn’t seem to be any way to the ledge apart from going there by boat, unless there was a door on the cliffside. Somehow the boat with all the stuff and the ledge was the coziest thing I’ve seen in ages.
A view from the top of the cliffs.
The boat was covered with laundry and all kinds of stuff.
There was a barbeque, plants, more clothes, ornaments like the small lighthouse, and all kinds of small stuff on the ledge. It looked like like someone's front yard.
When I was pedaling back towards home, I was feeling good and peaceful. I’ll have to get a few proper urban exploration trips done before the end of the summer – maybe a certain abandoned prison or a factory, or a Russian era ammo dump. Poking my nose into old ruins and often just poking my nose into places a bit off the beaten track always manages to put me in a strange but very good mood. It’s kind of peaceful, timeless and weird in the sense that I feel like I was remembering something very old. I can’t place the memory and strangely enough I remember feeling like that when I was a kid too. I wonder whose memories do I have.
Nevertheless, feeling good and peaceful. Now a bit of gaming, some food and then early to bed.
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