Karhumägi

Karhumägi (form. Medvezhegorsk, Russ. Медвежьегорск, Finn. Karhumäki) is a Uralican city situated in south-central Karelia county, on the northern tip of Lake Onega, Europe's second-largest lake. A key junction sits just within city limits, with eastward-bound Highway UH-7 running north (and therefore not into the actual city core), a set of major rural roads running south, (of which one is a truck route to Kondupohju) and Highway UH-18 running through the city itself and travelling through several small cities and large towns. It is around an hour and a half's drive north of Petroskoi.

This junction location makes the city very important in the road-building industry, with both the equipment and the materials used to build roads being built in the city. But the city has also been a multi-industry city for some time. Metallurgy, other machine-building, food production, and railway production and repair were already staples in the city, and the annexation simply added more to that in the form of consumer-goods manufacturing, medical supplies manufacturing, chemical manipulation, distillation, and hi-tech manufacturing.

Also, Karhumägi is an important retail stop, having the second-largest retail sector between Petroskoi and Murmansk, after Montsa.

Culture
Founded as Medvezhya Gora ("Bear Mountain") in 1916, it was renamed Medvezhegorsk in 1938 upon attaining "gorod" status (effectively city status even though it was only about as big as a mid-sized Uralican town), but it was overtaken by Finns during the Winter Wars and called Karhumäki, which is an almost literal translation from Russian to Finnish of the town's original name (Karhuvuori would be more literal but less accurate regarding the hill for which the city was named). In spite of this, the name only lasted as long as the Finns held the territory, and the name was changed back again in 1944.

Still, the Finns hung onto the name, and the Karelians kept their equivalent as well. The Karelian name was voted as the "official cartographers' name" of the city in late 2009 after Karelia was annexed into Uralica, which shouldn't surprise anyone who's seen their most recent census data - Karhumägi is the only city in the world where Karelians are the majority ethnicity, since Finns and/or Russians outnumber them in every other settlement with city status. Here, Russians only make up roughly 12.5% of the population, with Karelians making up just slightly over half and Finns coming in at 27.5%. The remaining 10% is a mishmash of Estonians, Livonians, and Hungarians.

The city bears many marks of war. It is one of the last remaining areas where one can see remnants of World War II bunkers in the area, even though claims that it was part of the infamous Mannerheim Line are false, since that World War II reinforcement chain was actually further south, in the Karelian Isthmus. There is also a cenotaph in the city centre, replacing one destroyed in Great War III, that names all people who perished in the Medvezhegorsky Offensive of 1942, Finn and Russian alike.

On a less violent note, the city still retains its original focal point - the Bear Mountain railway station, built in 1916 - and a very comprehensive museum of local history and lore. There is also the Vichka Waterfall on the northern outskirts of the city, and some small caves that are popular with local spelunkers.

Neighbourhoods and Suburbs

 * Vichka
 * Lumbushi
 * Karhumäen Junction

Note: although it is located quite close to the town of Pindushi, the two are separate municipal bodies and there is no plan for a merger.