Heinola is a small industrial town the population of which is about 18,000. It's half an hours' drive on the motorway from our city. I took some pictures from the walk in the town center. Unlike most small towns of its size, it has some history. Heinola was founded in 1776 and it was a provincial capital a long time ago. There used to be a seminary for primary school teacher education until the 1970's. It's clearly been in decline for the past few decades.
The river Kymi, the second largest in the country, flows through it from Lake Päijänne to the west, which makes it a popular stop for recreational boaters. There are other two large lakes on both the western and eastern sides of the lake. The waterway is the reason for the existence of the sawmills and the integrated fluting cardboard and pulp mill. The latter is large and very modern.
Here are some shots I took in the town center and the riverside park.
The main street
This house is a museum. It was the home of one of the regional governors two hundred years ago.
The water tower. There's a cafeteria in it.
We walked to the riverside park.
It's not exactly crowded despite the sunny and warm weather attracting people to spend time outside.
The water is quite clear in the stream. It's also somewhat colder than in the lakes.
We walked back to the town square and our car.
Concrete architecture. There used to be more nice wooden buildings in the past but many of them have been torn down to give way to development. Barbarism!
Youth and their mopeds: a sure sign of spring.
These are the nicest looking buildings in the town center.
We drove to a ridge a short distance to the east where there is a cafeteria in a really nice old building and really nice views. The cafeteria was closed but we walked to the railway/pedestrian bridge connecting the north and south sides of the town center.
A couple of local people told us it will most likely be opened on May 1. We went on to the bridge.
That boat is the same boat as in one of the earlier photos in this series.
The current is pretty strong, which is why the river wasn't frozen over like the lakes here still tend to be.
I think that's the integrated fluting cardboard + pulp mill. When the wind blows from that direction and particularly when there is a strong inversion layer at the right altitude, the stink is pretty horrible.
Railway parts
The railway was built in 1932.
Views towards the west to the park from the bridge.
That large suspension bridge over the stream was built for the motorway from Helsinki via Lahti. It's the E4 that crosses the entire country from Helsinki on the south coast, Lahti, Jyväskylä, Oulu in the center-west of the country, Rovaniemi on the arctic circle and finally Utsjoki in the far northern tip before continuing in Norway.
We turned back to the cafeteria on the ridge and our car.
We saw this before arriving at the cafeteria. It was close to a place called seminary hill. It's quite fancy for an ordinary family residence. Maybe it belonged to someone important.