3/22/2015

Beer brewery (Part 1), Satakunta, Finland


Visited 31.1.2015 by skkye & jonahi. This used to be the longest functioning beer brewery in Finland that stayed on the same site all the way. The factory started to serve the thirsty by brewing its first bottles of beer in 1853. It functioned more than a hundred years without big drama, but in 1972 the company was sold to Sinebrychoff. Sinebrychoff, on its part, was sold to Danish Carlsberg in 1997.

This beer factory was producing several beers and sodas, including Pepsi. It was also the first one in Finland to start packaging the beers also in cans. In the end one single beer brand made about 80 percent of the brewery's production, and after the brewing of that beer was moved to another town (which already was a catastrophe), the factory was decided to run down. These pictures reveal some anger and disappointment of the factory's workers in a form of a toy truck that says "an aid package to Kerava" with band aids forming words "OFF". Actually the whole town was mad about the decision, not only because the city had invested a lot to keep this factory alive. But boycotting the company's products and protesting didn't help the cause, and the brewery produced its last bottle of beverage in September 2009. This is not the first nor the last time in history when it proves unprofitable to sell local companies to huge multinational corporations. It only makes the owner rich and everyone else poor, at least because they end up losing jobs and pieces of their cultural history. However, there is nowadays a microbrewery and its restaurant functioning on the same plot.

The production lines, tanks and other machinery has been mostly sold away, and there are plans to build apartment houses on the property, even though the building inventory that has been conducted assessed most of the buildings as valuable and suggested to preserve them. I will be curious to see what happens to the factory in the future.

It was by the way very exciting to get in here - the place is very centrally located and there were a lot of people going past the place continuously. The layer of snow didn't help us, and we ended up leaving too many revealing footprints. We had to borrow a huge ladder in order to climb past a high fence with very nasty spikes on top of it. I was very scared to pierce my eyeball there, or worse, but we survived and found a way in the building as well! Of course we returned the ladder afterwards. It's funny how we always end up finding ladders to borrow when we really need one to get in!

More posts from here coming soon!

3/14/2015

Documentary starring some exciting abandoned places and us!

Hey! We both have been quite busy with other stuff lately, as you can see from the absence of new posts. However, some weeks ago we visited a beer factory and there are some posts from there coming up soon. It was an interesting and cool place and we had to do some ninja tricks to get in!

Meanwhile, you can check out this documentary called Autiotalokohtaloita ("Deserted house destinies") that was shown in the Finnish television yesterday:

http://areena.yle.fi/tv/2293171

In the documentary, both of us are exploring the abandoned island of Jussarö, together with a journalist. The journalist is also visiting this house which is one of the most beautiful abandoned houses we have visited so far, and this house, which is one of the creepiest and scariest since a murder was most probably committed there. The victim was buried inside the oven, maybe alive. Unfortunately the film is only in Finnish and Swedish, but you can always enjoy the pictures no matter where you're from!

And if you missed our posts from Jussarö, you can find them starting from here.

We'll get back to you with the beer factory posts. Enjoy the spring sunshine and keep on exploring!