Tour Report: The Baron's Castle [Revisit]

The second of three abandoned castles I visited on our tour in May of last year together with North Urbex, Pixelcracker and Lost Places in Schleswig-Holstein und Umland was also one that I'd visited before.
And I have to look back at this first time for the start of my story about this visit.
As we had finished our first visit of this castle in July of 2015, we were sitting on the steps in front of the main door of the castle waiting for the last one of our crew to exit the castle through a basement window in the back, when the caretaker showed up on his little tractor - along with his German Shepherd. We had a nice talk with him and he introduced us to the dog - her name was "Helga". He told us that he named the dog Helga, because that was also the name of his wife and this way, he only has to remember one name...
Anyway, it was a nice conversation, and he didn't find out about the guy who was still in the house.

Two and a half years later, I arrived with my friends - and at that moment, the caretaker came on his tractor and drove right to the side of the castle and started cutting the grass...damn!
Because of the "history" I had with him, I got out of the car and went towards him. Helga the dog greeted me happily, and the cartetaker seemed a bit puzzled that I knew the dog's name. I introduced myself and he remembered the talk we had more than two years ago. I explained to him that I was there with a couple of friends and we were wondering if we could get into the castle to take some photos. He said that the baron wouldn't be too happy about that and that he was near impossible to reach to ask for permission.
And then he said..."and it's all locked tightly, so you couldn't get in anyway."
Did we hear correctly? Did he just challenge us?
So we asked if it was okay to take photos - if - we found a way in. He didn't really say yes, but neither did he really say no... So we told him that we were going around to check out the castle from the outside - the challenge still ringing in our ears...

Of course we did find a way in.
I'm not going to go into the details, but when we got out after about two hours and decided to say goodbye to the caretaker, he was mighty pissed at us, saying that he'd told us not to enter the building. We replied that we'd taken his words as a challenge and told him about our way in.
I can still hear his words as he was looking at the narrow access, then at one of us, saying "The fat one never made it through there!"

In the end, we were all friends again, and we even got a half hour history lecture about the castle from the caretaker, which made the visit even more worthwile!


To find out more about the history of this place and to check out all the photos, click the button below.

Tour Report: Maison T. [Revisit]

The second tour in May of last year - this one only a one-day excursion - I undetook not with my wife, but with my good friends North Urbex, Pixelcracker and Lost Places in Schleswig-Holstein und Umland. We had chosen three abandoned castles in Eastern Germany as our desired spots. I had visited two of them before together with my wife, one in November of 2014, the other in July of 2015, so there was nothing new for her to see, but I wanted to check for changes that do happen over the course of a few years.

The first spot that we visited that day was Maison T., the one that I first visited in 2014. Although I had hoped that the old access was still opne, I had little hope for that to actually be true...and that access was no longer open. So we had to look for another way in.
And we did find one...
I am not going to go into the details, but it involved a rather elevated window, a block of concrete and a very old and jittery ladder...it was fun to watch, and I do think that there is a video in existence that shows a particularly scandalous view of  the butt crack of one of our crew members :)

Eventually, we all made our way in and were free to explore. I took the opportunity to get some shots that I'd missed during my first visit, so it was a succesful visit in terms of photography. The state of the castle has declined over the years. The decay has increased and so has the vandalism - although the overall look is still better than you might expect.

Altogether, it was great start in the day with a great crew, lots of laughs and a great location.


To find out more about the history of this place and to check out all the photos, click the button below.

Tour Report: Maison Hotel

This old mansion from the 1860s was another accidental find my wife and I made on our tour through Eastern Germany in May of last year. Similar to "Maison Mouton", we were driving through the lovely countryside and while passing a small village, we stumbled across a beautiful old manor house.
There was a car parked in front and two men carrying materials into the house.
I got out of the car and asked if the house was abandoned and if they are the owners. The younger of the two men answered that he was in fact the owner and that the mansion was only partly abandoned. He was renovating it in an attempt to turn it into a kind of hotel.
I asked if there was the possibility to explore the place and take some photos. He was really nice and said that it would be okay - but only on the next day, because he was about to leave. So we planned to visit the place the following day right after "Maison Mouton".

The next day we arrived as scheduled and found the owner working in the garden. He gave us a short tour of the building and explained that he had bought the mansion in 2011 and has since been renovating everything by himself, buying materials and other things such as doors, window frames etc. all over the world to keep the appearance as close to the original as possible. His plan was to turn parts of the old house into a sort of bed & breakfast. He was finished with psome of the rooms and what we saw was really nice and showed how much effort and love he had put into the place.

In this post, you won't find the renovated roms, because we concentrated on the still abandoned parts of the mansion.
To check out how the building and the rooms look like now, you can visit the mansion's website here.


To find out more about the history of this place and to check out all the photos, click the button below.