Wanderings in desolated grounds.

This time Pölis took a trip to the western part of Laajasalo, the biggest island of Helsinki. Although mostly a big suburbia, western part of the island has been left mostly desolated.
The area of Kruunuvuori was populated by summer villas of rich people in early 1900's but was left on it's own after city of Helsinki published the idea of turning it into a suburban area in 1960's. 50 years later we still haven't seen a sign of new apartment towers or tram lines but at least Kruuuvuori is already in the city plan due to be constructed in the following years.

We'll start the tour from the southern end of the area, where an oil harbour was located until early 2000's. This harbour was the most important location of importing motor oils and other oil products into Helsinki by many oil companies like Neste, Teboil and Shell.

There were still three oil tanks prepared to be transported away. A small and much older oil tank with a high-tech scale measuring instrument caught Pölypallo's special attention.

Find Pölis from this electric distribution board of the oil jetty (dust balls always like high voltage)

Sign says Neste Oy's storage area. Access to unauthorized persons prohibited under the penalty of liability. A bit weird translation but so is the original text in Finnish also. Btw. Neste Oy is the biggest oil company in Finland and still owns almost all of the oil terminals.

"Garbage for ships" and other important signs in the former oil jettys.

Next Pölis wanted to take a look at the old villas a couple of kilometres north.
We'll start from Villa Lindberg, partially collapsed and decorated with graffitis from homeless residents probably in 1990's.

Next was Puutarhurin huvila (Gardener's villa) which still had quite intact upper floor where Pölis jumped immidiately to the closet in children's room.

Another Pölypallo's windowposing

Another villa down by Kaitalahti.

This was a very unqiue and decorated 100-years old grill house on top of the cliff, until someone about 10 years ago decided to grill it off the map.

Find the woodpecker

Next was Villa Schwiegermutter. Nice panorama windows still in place and some 10 years old milk and cookies which Pölis luckily didn't grab a taste of...

In the Villa Schwiegermutter old oven had changed it's location from kitchenette to lounge. Luckily Pölis didn't go in there either..

Finally Villa Kissinge with some angry birds and an impressive collection of newspapers from 1980's on the floor.

Kruunuvuorenranta is definately going to change it's shape, this is what the new suburbia will be like after 50 years of waiting and decaying villas http://en.uuttahelsinkia.fi/areas/139/kruunuvuorenranta

Pölis arrives at the Vasikkasaari by sailing boat from northern side of island. Vasikkasaari was a military island from early 1800 to 1962 however there've been people's summer cottages since 50's at northern half of island. Before cottages whole island have been military fuel storage, which have almost been demolished by explosive fire in 1918. After that army fixed one oiltank and pumpstation which survived somehow, island was again fuel storage but in smaller scale. At the 1962 goverment decided that they'd sell the island to the city of Helsinki, nowadays it's a cabin and hiking area. More information about island in finnish at www.vasikkasaari.org .