Tammisaari Police, Good Morning

Our neighbors in the village were a middle-aged couple and the man's elderly mother.

One summer Sunday, the wife and mother came to us to ask if I could give them a ride to Tammisaari, a small town, maybe 50 km from us.

My husband stayed home with the other children, and I took our three-week-old baby with me because I was still breastfeeding him.

In the car, our neighbor told us the reason for our trip. The previous Thursday, another neighbor of ours, a petty criminal, had told them that he needed to borrow their car to get to the district court. Our neighbors had lent him the car with the understanding that it would be returned immediately after the court hearing on Friday.

However, the car was not there, and the borrower did not answer messages or calls.

On Sunday morning, there had been a call from the Tammisaari police. The police had arrested a man who had broken into a summer cottage and now they had a car full of household electronics. Our neighbor assured the police that their only possession in the car was a small bottle of window washer fluid in the trunk. So, no stereo, TV, etc. Apparently, the petty criminal was an ecologically conscious person and decided to use the car for other necessary purposes, such as breaking into a cottage, and saving gas by not returning the car to its owner.

The police said that the car could be picked up the same day. So, we were on our way to Tammisaari to pick up the car.

We pulled into the police station parking lot and I waited with the baby while the women went in to pick up their car.

A moment later they came out, confused, holding the car key, which was not theirs. The confusion only increased when, according to their instructions, we were supposed to find the car in a parking lot near the marina.

We drove towards the seashore and checked various parking lots. We didn't see their car. There was no other way than to return to the police station to get more detailed instructions.

I stayed in the car with the baby again and waited. Soon the women returned in a hurry. Now suddenly the baby in the car, a policeman would come to guide us to the car. Suddenly, I saw a police car speeding out of the police station yard into traffic. We barely managed to catch up.

We sped through Tammisaari following the police car all the way to the guest marina. The parking lot was large, and the police car parked in the only free space. The women went out to look for the car with the police.

We failed again: their car was nowhere to be found. So back to the police station. I wondered aloud to the neighbors how a car full of stolen goods could have been left in one of the city parking lots and not at the police station.

I waited in the car while the women went into the police station.

After a while the women returned and told me that the car was indeed in the police locked yard. Now they were waiting for the car to be emptied, because the belongings were the loot of a cottage burglary.

I waited until they were sure they would get a car that was definitely theirs and that they would have a key with which they could definitely start it.

On the way home, the whole adventure made me laugh, it was straight out of a sketch show. You know, the kind where they ask which one of the two police officers in the patrol car could read and which one could write.