Half-abandoned & burned houses, Tallinn, Estonia

Visited 10.2.2013 by skkye & jonahi. Again, sorry for the silence in here. We have been quite busy this spring and not doing very much urban exploration lately, expect when traveling. But here are some photos from our trip to Tallinn in February (even though it almost hurts to look at these snowy cold photos right now...), and soon we will post something from as far as the Balkans! So stay tuned, this blog will wake up. We have also opened a postcard shop from where you can buy 10 different cards with our photos from Finnish abandoned houses. Just click the "Postcard shop" link below the banner and follow the written instructions :-)

In Tallin's part of town named Kopli there are lots of blocks with shabby houses. Some of them had burned down and only the tiled walls remained standing. Some had burned only partly and were homes to homeless people. Some had a couple of abandoned apartments but the rest were inhabited, and some vice versa. I love all kinds of wooden houses, and most of these houses were also very beautiful, despite their current decadence. Also the tiled walls were nice-looking, and somebody had written "laugh" in many places.

When we were walking on the snowy yards, skkye almost fell in a well that was covered with snow! It was a huge luck that she didn't step in the middle of the hole. Then we decided to turn around and walk only on the driveways.

Ancient batcave prison, Sauvo, Finland

Visited 7.3.2013 by jonahi. If the last prison was old, it wasn't anything compared to this one. I found this place during my workday when we were visiting the nearby lean-to with a reed thatched roof, and the villagers told me that there was this old prison nearby. I've got to say that I have a fantastic job, not all of us have opportunities to explore abandoned places during work time! I think those people were more excited about the cute little bat hibernating on the back wall, though. The prison itself looks just like a cellar, and if I didn't know it has been a prison, I would have guessed that it was just an ordinary storage. Nevertheless, I wouldn't want to end up locked in there. It was a dark, distressing and claustrophobic place without any kind of a window. The only light came in from the slits of the door frames. I wonder what have been the reasons why people were put in there in the days long gone. The village wasn't big and it was far away from anything, so it hasn't been a very populous place and not many murderers or other bad people could have lived there. But at least the prisoners may have had a bat friend with them.