Tour Report: Hillside Hotel

The abandoned malt factory had been the final spot on the main part of our summer vacation in 2017. For the way home, we had planned to spend one more night at our friend Jens' place and take some night shots at the abandoned sanatorium in his backyard.
So we spent one more night at the hotel in Dresden before packing our stuff the next morning. Next to a few breaks to smoke a cigarette, we made exactly two stops.
The first one was to pick up a few cases case of really nice Schnapps made from bread that we had discovered in Leipzig two years earlier. It's called "Brotschnaps" and if you're interested, you can check it out here.
The second stop was an abandoned hotel in a small toon in the mountains that we had our eye on as a nice little explore on the way.
As we arrived, we parked the car a few hundred meters down the street and walked the rest of the way. There were no fences or signs of any kind, nobody was around, so we quickly walked onto the premises and found cover behind some bushes before starting to look for a way in.
The abandoned hotel consists of four main parts: The old main building that has a wooden structure, the newly-built annex constructed of stone, and the indoor pool whose roof had already collapsed, make up the main hotel. A little off to the side is a small house which was probably used as accommodation for the hotel's employees.
We started checking the main building and quickly found a way in. The first couple of rooms that we found looked promising, but a fire had scorched part of the building - including the stairs to the first floor. We decided not to take the risk at that point and went on to explore the annex. It was completely empty and looked like it was supposed to be refurbished, but work had stopped after stripping the rooms. The only thing to see there was some nice light and a bit of green in the rooms.
Eventually, we left the main building and turned our attention towards the small house a little up the hill. Gaining entry wasn't as easy as we had hoped, but with a little acrobatics, we made it safely in.
The place was a real highlight, most of the furniture was still there and seemed to be relatively untouched.
All in all, a nice little "en-route-exploration". I was a little annoyed that we chickened out and didn't walk up the scorched stairs, but I convinced myself that it was the right thing to do.
This conviction only held for about six weeks, when I returned for a revisit. But that's another story.


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

Tour Report: The Malt Factory

I had seen this huge abandoned malting plant up close a couple of times before when I passed it riding a train, and of course I had seen a lot of photos on the internet, but I'd never had the chance to explore it myself - until that day back in August of 2017.
My wife and I had walked past it a couple of days earlier to check for a way in, but the place was not so abandoned after all. On one side, there is an active railway area (the one I rode past on), and parts of the factory premises appeared to be in use as well. We could've easily entered the place, but we weren't sure how far the active parts reached and how quickly we could be spotted once we were on the premises - after all, there were apartment buildings with balconies across the street...
We gave up. This looked too risky.
We walked along the surrounding wall one more time, when a possibility arose! We managed to get permission for a semi-illegal entry.
I'm not going to go into the details, but it involved a phone call that we had to promise never took place...

Two days later, after we had dropped off my mother-in-law at the train station, my wife and I drove back to the malt factory and took the easy way in.
Once on the premises, however, it was hard to find access to the main part of the factory. There were a few open doors to some of the smaller parts, but the corridors to the central production facilities were walled shut.
It took us some time to find an opening, but the floor seemed very unstable. Remembering the story we'd heard about a photographer who broke through a floor in this place a few months earlier and had to be freed by the fire department wasn't really beneficial for our decision-making process at that moment, either.
In the end, I squeezed through the hole in the wall and my wife stayed behind. In the end, the floor was safe, but you never know - and it is good that at least one of us has some common sense ;)
The reward for my recklessness were a couple of nice shots of some remaining machinery and the "real" production halls.
After I had safely returned to my wife, we went back the way we had taken to get in, got back to the car and drove back to the hotel.
A successful day of exploring ended with a nice dinner at the Restaurant "Hüftgold", where we'd had dinner once before during our stay. This was a nice way to finish our trip to this area of Germany before we headed to the Harz mountains the following day.


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

Tour Report: The Leather Factory

Since our exploration of the abandoned meat factory was cut a little short, there was still some time left to visit another spot before we had to drop off my mother-in-law at the train station for her ride home.

We decided for an abandoned leather factory in a small town bordering a large city. The drive wasn't too far, and so there still would be enough time to drive to the train station after we'd finished our exploration.

We drove to the address that I had found out for this location, and we could see the old leather factory from pretty far away. The surrounding area looked a little different from what I had seen on Google Earth during planning - a supermarket had been built where I suspected the access to be... We were lucky, though - it was Sunday, and there was hardly any cars parking on the supermarket parking lot, so we had a nice place to park ourselves. A truck was parked next to the fence separating the supermarket from the industrial ruin. The hole was right next to the truck, whose driver was either sleeping or not even in the truck, but we still tried to be as quiet as possible while sneaking past the truck's door and slipped through the hole in the fence.

We hurried across the open field towards the factory building and found an open door right away. We were in and started our explore. Lots of cars and pedestrians were passing the factory during the time we were in there, completely unaware of our presence. We explored the place bottom to top. Considering the region in which it stands, the building is still in relatively good shape. There are plenty of graffiti, and about every piece of metal has been stolen, but the vast rooms, the arched windows and the sunlight gave the old ruin a nice atmosphere to take photos.

About two hours after our arrival, we had finished checking out all rooms of the abandoned leather factory, and we went back to the car.

We drove to the train station, dropped off my mother-in-law, and after that, my wife and I were off to the next location, so stay tuned for the next tour report...

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