Operation "Easter Basket" - Prison 93

Due to traffic jams all over the Ruhr area, we arrived at our hotel rather late - but at least the tour had started with the exploration of an abandoned psychiatric hospital.
We went out for dinner and planned our tour for the next day, and we finished the first day of Operation "Easter Basket" with a couple of beers and shots in our hotel room.
The next morning, we got up relatively early and drove for about 70 kilometers to our first spot. We had decided for a more than a hundred-year-old prison that has been left unused for about 5 years now.
Freddy and I had only been to one other prison before, and I had found that experience pretty cool, and this particular prison is huge compared to the one I'd visited in Denmark, so it seemed like a good idea to check this one out.
When we got to the location, we first drove around the block to check for a good place to park and maybe spot a way in. All you could see from the streets were high walls and the central building of the prison.
So we consulted the map one more time and decided to park in the residential area richt next to the prison. We found a parking place near a little path that looked like it led in the direction of the prison, and I hoped that this was the case.
It had started to rain, so there were no people outside that could keep us from exploring, but I could feel the neighbor's eyes on us through their windows...
Anyway, we walked along the path and it deed in fact lead us right to the prison wall. It was like a deja vu - just like in the Danish prison, someone had broken a hole in the wall, and we could climb through easily. Once we were inside the walls, we started looking for the way into the buildings. It took us some time to find an open door that led us into the newer building and through the basement, we were able to get into the large older part.
In spite of all the graffiti that have been sprayed on the walls over the years, exploring this prison was a unique experience. Seeing the facility from the inside and imagining how the inmates must have lived there set a really strange mood. In a way, the prison was still active, because there was still electricity, and the neon lights were humming their typical 50 Hertz song...

After about three hours, more people came for a photo shoot, and they started being loud and making noises, which kind of ruined the mood, so we finished up our exploration and left the same way we came.

There have been recent developments regarding this prison. About one month after our visit, a fire broke out in the prison chapel, and after that, a security service was tasked with protection of the place 24/7.
Preparations for the demolition of the prison have begun over this month, and the demolition is scheduled to take place from February until November of next year.


To find out more about the history of this old prison and to check out all the photos from this amazing spot, click the button below.

Operation "Easter Basket" - Psychiatric Hospital E.

About one month after our tour of the Harz region together with Freddy from Nordgriller Urbex, our classic tour lineup reunited once again for a tour of epic proportions.
We had planned four days of urbex frivolity in Germany's Ruhr area  - a region with undreds of diverse spots to discover.
As always, we met at our place, loaded the car and left a little later than we had originally planned.
No worries though, the traffic down there is always a bitch...so much so that we got stuck in one traffic jam after another and only had time for one location on the way.

It was already getting dark when we arrived at the old psychiatric hospital.
The building was standing pretty much in the middle of the forest, but there were the neighbor's houses in sight, so we hesitated, because we knew this place to be overrun by teens and there had been some fires in the past, so there was the possibility that the neighbors call the police anytime they see someone on the premises.
After all, we did follow our credo "Impudence wins", and we just walked past the nightbor's houses and right onto the hospital grounds.
As expected, the access was easy to fnd. We could see that any effort to protect this building from vandals entering was futile. It seems like every new fence is demolished within days.
If you ask me, it's only a question of time when the whole place burns down to the ground.
The inside looked much like the outside. Hardly one stome has been left unturned by the vandals.

But - it was a nice place to warm up for the next days of touring, there were so many places waiting for us........


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

Pharmaceutical Company B. [Revisit]

Almost two and a half years after our first visit to this really cool location, my wife and I got the chance for a revisit at the end of February of this year.
My brother had gotten married and the celebration was scheduled for the afternoon of a cold but sunny day about a week after our last tour. I had arrived the night before by train, coming straight from a three-day business trip, and my wife had hitched a ride in the car with my parents, so I had asked her to bring all my tour equipment with her so we'd have at least the chance to go for a tour.
On Friday evening, we sat together with my parents and we decided to get up early and try for a revisit of the pharmaceutical factory.
The location wasn't too far, so we were able to squeeze the visit in our time table.
We got up really early, took the subway and walked the rest of the way. The access we had taken two years before wasn't there anymore, so we had to look for another way in. I always prefer the direct route, so we just walked along the fence until we got to a pile of stuff that gave us the opportunity to just climb over the gate. Easy. Or so we thought.
We tried to find the buildings that we hadn't checked out the last time we were there, but since a lot of the older buildings have been demolished since, we were having trouble to find our way. The first building we found was new to us, so we took our time there. The secon building we already knew, but it was nice noetheless, because the first time, it had been raining, and this time, it was a nice sunny morning, and it was interesting to see what how different - or not - everything looked.

As we entered the third building, we saw a white car pulling up.
Someone got out, but we couldn't see were he was going. We kept really still and waitet for him to leave, but he wouldn't. And we didn't see or hear him either.
After about thirty minutes, we decided to just keep going. We finished up the third building and went out to see where to go next.
As we looked out of the door, we saw workers on the premises. They were standing by the huilding right next to the one we just left.
We waited for them to look the other way and then ran around the corner to safety. As we caught our breath, a car came along the road past us, so we jumped right into a small transformer house to hide. It worked, we got out again and quietly went back the way we came. When my wife noticed more workers that possibly saw us, I just said, I don't care, and we more or less openly ran towards the fence and climbed out the way we came.
Except for the unexpected exercise, this tour was everything we had hoped for. I'm glad that we had the chance to see this place once again before it is completely gone.


To find out more about the history of this chemical ruin and to check out all the photos from this amazing spot, click the button below.

The Red Church

We still had some time left on the way home on our tour, and we decided to pay a visit tothe "Red Church", mostly because it was in the right direction and didn't mean too much of a detour.
We quickly found the location, but it didn't look too accessible at first glance - but a first glance is often deceptive, so of course, we decided to take a closer look.
We parked the car in a side road and walked a couple of hundred meters until we got to the church.
Shortly before we got out of the car, it started raining. Not too much, but enough to be a little annoying.
We got to the fence that shielded the church from the rest of the world. It was right at the street, so it really wasn't the first choice as an access route, and we went on to look for another way in.
There was no chance. The other sides of the church were lined by a high wall and houses that didn't allow access either.
We must have looked for about half an hour when we got back to the front of the church and were standing at the iron gate - that rusty barrier keeping us from fulfilling our urbex destiny.
At on epoint, I got really fed up with it. I didn't care about the cars going by or the neighbours watching, and I gracefully climbed over the fence. Well, not really grace had nothing to do with it after all. But the others followed and we at least were on the premises. Only thing left to do was to get in. Easier said then done, the only way into the building was a really small window at the side of the building. I'm not really tall, but it wasn't easy getting in. Somehow we all managed, though, and we were all amazed by the beauty of this church that has been abandoned for more than sixty years.

There isn't much left, but it was well worth the effort. And it was Sunday after all - what better day to go to church ;)
We left after about three quarters of an hour to drive home, and complete our tour with a couple of shots at home.


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

The House of Wheelchairs

After finishing our tour of the abandoned power station, there was still a little daylight left, so we dicided to give Freddy from Nordgriller Urbex a short tour of the abandoned crematory that is just a few kilometers away.
Since my wife and I had already been there, we didn't take any photos, but met our friends from Lost Places Knipser again who'd had the same idea.
We finished the day with a nice dinner in the city near our hotel and with a good night's sleep afterward.
The next day was the last day of the tour, but we had some spots planned "on the road" for the way back.
The first was a rather "famous" urbex spot in a small village in the East German countryside - a castle with a long history that had last been used as a senior citizens home, but has been abandoned for a number of years now.
As with some locations, the only trouble here was finding a good place to park. We usually prefer the "impudence wins"-approach and parked relaticvely obvious near where we suspected the access. It worked out nicely. The front door was open, and we got in easily.
During our two hours in the place, a number of other - more or less - urbex people came and left again. I am always amazed at who you can meet in lost places....'nuff said.
Luckily, we had arrived pretty early, so we had no truoble leaving when the "tourists" started arriving in alarming numbers.


To find out more about the history of this really neat spot and to check out all the photos from this amazing spot, click the button below.