I was walking along Töölönkatu at four in the morning of May the first, when I noticed that there was a campfire in the yard of the railway storehouses.
Something like that is rare in the centre of Helsinki, so I went to warm up a bit.
The group gathered around the bonfire were busy adding fuel to it, which was nice. Usually I need to constantly seek out and chop firewood myself.
There were about 200 people there. I didn’t know any of them. A young man sat next to me and offered me a drink from his bottle. The atmosphere was relaxed.
Then someone threw a gas canister onto the fire. It became necessary to leave. Police appeared at the far end of the storehouses, standing with tight jaws, squeezing their clubs, but the birds of Töölänlahti bay sang as the sun came up.
In the morning I read in the newspaper that I had taken part in a riot at the railway storehouses.
