Scouting reports (trips to areas relevant to the comic)

[Keep Looking]

Ooh, Helsinki looks amazing! Congratulations on the safe return from your scouting trip!

I have also recently been travelling, but in unexplored territory (Singapore and Malaysia to visit relatives, but I saw some hornbills as well which were cool!)

[Jitter]

Ooo, beautiful Helsinki! If you (Mirasol or anyone else) visit again, give me a heads up and maybe we can meet?

This also reminds me that I did a quick ride-by scouting by train of Mikkeli railway station in June.

Area: Mikkeli, Finland, railway station
Date: June 5th 2023
Scout: Jitter

Trolls detected: no
Troll activity detected: no
Troll activity indicated: no
Ghost activity detected: no
Infected persons detected: 0
Threat level assessment: low
Notes: no people using face masks, carrying excessive amounts of toilet paper, or otherwise engaged in apparent pandemic activity were detected. Area appears infection free at the time if inspection.


Station building:


Platform area:


Parking lot:






Compare: https://sssscomic.com/comic.php?page=25 and https://sssscomic.com/comic.php?page=26

[JoB]

This also reminds me that I did a quick ride-by scouting by train of Mikkeli railway station in June.

(Pardon my derailing the thread, but is that an actual fist-sized-but-precision-cut HOLE in the inner pane of the train's double-glaze window ... ?)

[Jitter]

Yes, it’s the spot where the window pane can be broken by using the emergency hammer to create an emergency exit.

[midwestmutt]

Wonderful photos, Mirasol. That kite festival looks fantastic!

[JoB]

Yes, it’s the spot where the window pane can be broken by using the emergency hammer to create an emergency exit.

I pondered that possibility, but even if that hole permits you to more easily break the outer pane, wouldn't you nonetheless still be required to break the inner pane as well?

[mental image of noodleFinns evacuating the railroad car through just the pre-made hole of the inner pane]

[Jitter]

Thankfully I have never needed to emergency exit a train (or any other vehicle for that matter) so I don’t know but I assume they have some idea. Perhaps the hole is for starting and when the outer glass starts to break the entire structure gets weakened and then the inner pane is also easy to break with the hammer. I don’t know. I suppose I should, being An Academic Engineer but I don’t. Even us Academic Engineers don’t know everything. How sad.

[wavewright62]

*waves away implication that engineers don't know everything*

Good scouting!  I do note the parking spaces near the station are conveniently located for waiting in cars to pick up disembarking passengers (and doing crossword puzzles).  Not sure where the cafe is, although non-trollified patrons looking for a coffee fix may have dismantled it in their frustration?

[JoB]

Not sure where the cafe is, although non-trollified patrons looking for a coffee fix may have dismantled it in their frustration?

You mean Helmi's restaurant? Aino was picked up at the Mikkeli train station coming from there, but it remains unclear whether she just walked over - then it should be really near by in no-pedestrian-zones-and-parking-cars-seen-in-StreetView-along-all-streets Mikkeli, or why else would Kaino not park elsewhere? - or arrived by train from Minna-knows-where.

[Jitter]

The railway station in Mikkeli is literally one block from the Market Square i.e. walkable from any cafe in the central area, and also close to the main highway. If I recall correctly, there is large underground parking lot under the market square in Mikkeli (as well as many other cities, e.g. Joensuu and Kuopio) which tends to be the easiest place to park in but you have to pay. Whereas the station may well also be metered, but as Kaino waits for just a short while, she probably wouldn’t pay and if the parking inspector came, she would explain how she was just about to go out to the meter (remember this was about 10 years ago, parking apps weren’t available at least widely in Finland back then). Furthemore, it’s possible Kaino doesn’t live in Mikkeli, and the station is usually signposted and thus easy to find even if not well familiar with the area. All in all the station could well be the most convenient location to wait.

It would of course also be possible Aino arrived by train. The place where they board the boat is somewhere nearby and she could have arrived for that. However there is no commuter train system in Mikkeli, and the long distance trains run something like once an hour. So, she wouldn’t be somewhat delayed when Helmi insisted her stay after closing, she would have missed her train entirely and would be an hour late or more. Also she expected they’d have to go pick Sqku up from home, which indicates they live quite locally.

Summa summarum I think Helmi’s restaurant or cafe is somewhere in the centre of Mikkeli.

[JoB]

It would of course also be possible Aino arrived by train. The place where they board the boat is somewhere nearby and she could have arrived for that. However there is no commuter train system in Mikkeli, and the long distance trains run something like once an hour. So, she wouldn’t be somewhat delayed when Helmi insisted her stay after closing, she would have missed her train entirely and would be an hour late or more.

Well then, how long does it take a native to solve the crosswords in a Finnish newspaper? I hear that The Times' puzzles may well be good for more than one missed train.

[Róisín]

The Times crosswords are a delight, and may take more than an hour to solve. Dunno if they still have a cryptic crossword, haven’t seen the Times for awhile, but those were my favourite ones.

[Mirasol]

Ooo, beautiful Helsinki! If you (Mirasol or anyone else) visit again, give me a heads up and maybe we can meet?

I´d love to if I can ever go there again (which I would really like to, I enjoyed that weekend very much)!
It only really came to me when I was already on the plane that I could have said something... ^^' I didn´t want to give you so short of a notice...

And nice scouting photos from you too! What I first thought was a wooden building, is that a train wagon?

[Jitter]

Yeah, it’s an old wagon now used as a cafe or something like that.

[Mirasol]

I have a new scouting report to make.

Area: Bornholm, Denmark
Date: August 18th - 3rd of September 2023
Scout: Mirasol, assisted by family

Trolls detected: no
Troll activity detected: no
Troll activity indicated: no
Palm trees found: no (I´m so sorry Reynir, I really looked! I just don´t think it´s the right climate...)
Infected persons detected: 0
Threat level assessment: very low
Notes: since the island has been a safe zone since Y0 and there is no indication of its defenses breaking, I´d say there is virtually no danger here.

We don´t actually see a whole lot of Bornholm in the comic, and that´s a shame, because it´s a really beautiful island! So have some landscapes of it:

A sand-beach first. Apparently they used to fill hourglasses with the sand here because it´s so fine. I can attest to that. Unfortunatelly the black algae you see in the picture smells pretty bad, so you might want to look for a place to swim without it.


To properly scout the area a high point is also a good start. So some views from Bornholm´s highest Lighthouse which is located in Due Odde.


There is indeed a whole bunch of agriculture on Bornholm. You can buy quite a lot of food that is produced locally here. I can see how the island could survive an apocalypse.


Something else that Bornholm is famous for is its artists. The Royal Danish Academy teaches courses on glass and ceramic here, so there´s plenty of shops and galleries with that. A lot of them also include paintings of course. (I can obviously not take photos inside of them though...) What you are allowed to photograph is the yearly sand sculpture exhibition in Nexø. This year´s theme is stories, legends, and anecdotes. (Well, my skew-whiff sand-castles cannot compete with those...)


And I found a blessed feline too!


Some beaches here have rocks instead of sand


Some are full-on cliffsides (The rock in the third picture is called the bear-rock, which I´m sure you can see why)


There´s four round churches on the island which date back to the 16th century. They originally served (presumably) as some mixture between bastion and church, and they all have a second, some even third story with storage-room for whatever needs to be stored or hidden (also perhaps a useful structure to have during an apocalypse. One should try not to fall down the stairs though....).


To have some more architecture, a view of Gudjem from a boat on the sea. All the chimneys belong to fish-smokehouses, but at least in Gudjem only one of them is still in use.


There´s also a castle ruin! And a few windmills!



All in all, I´d recommend paying a visit. No palmtrees, sure, but the whole landscape of the island has so much variety that it makes up for it (in my opinion at least). Even the weather changes super-fast if you drive across it.
But now I wonder in what way the island would have kept its art-traditions up over the Rash...