hiidenkonttibeta

Most of the streets in the center of Oulu are made of stone (red granite, I would guess) instead of asphalt. Even the zebra crossings are made of blackish and whitish stones. This is how they look:

The stones are cubes with about 10cm long sides. The streets seem to be basically constructed of a gravel base, an asphalt layer on top of that, then sand, and finally the stones on the top. Here’s a street which is under construction:

The streets look nicer than asphalt, but building them looks quite laborious. Usually about six workers go on all fours side by side in wet sand all day, hammering the stone cubes in place. The stones aren’t even in straight rows, they make archs, so they’ve got to have quite a good plan for putting the street together correctly.