Tour Report: Bunker of the Luftwaffe

On the way home from our short vacation in Eastern Germany back in November of 2017, my wife and I decided to make a quick stop to check out one more bunker.
The area is riddled with abandoned facilities from World War II as well as from the time of the Soviet occupation, and there was just enough time for one of those, so we chose the one where we expected the least trouble in terms of getting in.
It's not entirely clear what this bunker was, but it's pretty safe to assume that it was used for maintenance by the "Erprobungsstelle der Luftwaffe" (Luftwaffe Test Area).
We parked by the side of the road and walked don a path that led us into the forest. After a while, we arrived at a gate, There was a sign saying something about hunting season, but we walked past the gate through a hole in the fence and after a few meters, we could see the ruin of the bunker.
Right next to it, the Soviets had built a shelter which had been used as a communications hub for the airfield. Now it looked like it was only used by local farmers.
The ruin of the old bunker was more than impressive. The dimensions of the construction were huge - and since there were a lot of holes in it, you could really well see how massive the walls were.
The combination of the demolished construction from the 1940s, the graffiti of the Soviet soldiers on the walls and nature having reclaimed a lot of the area since the Soviets had left, gave kind of a spooky atmosphere to the place, especially with the bleak light of November...
We took our time and climbed around in the ruins...until...
A deer roared...then we hear a shot!
That sounded pretty close!
We couldn't tell, but we decided that this wasn't a place to stay any longer, and since we were almost done anyway, we left through the gate and got back to the car to drive home.


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

Tour Report: Brass Factory E.

It was raining a lot, but that wasn't going to spoil our day! After we had gotten out of the bunker below a factory, it took some time for us to get to the car, because the rain had really gotten heavy, and we had to find shelter under a bridge on the factory premises...
The next spot that we had planned for the day was an old factory not too far away, so we took only one of the two cars to get there, and found a parking spot right across the street.
The factory was secured rather well at the time, and we looked around for a while before deciding to take the only option we'd seen - go through a hole in the fence, sneak along the river more or less pressed to the factory wall before climbing in.
Every stone, every piece of wood was slippery, and of course the ground had become muddy...it took a little while, but we made it.
The factory was in various stags of decay - some parts were recognizably damaged by fire, some were still in pretty good shape. The place was pretty big, so we spent quite a while there - also, because the rain kept us inside the buildings from time to time ;)

It was a really nice explore together with our friend Töppi - check out his page here!


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

Tour Report: Factory Bunker E.

It was a rainy day in November almost two years ago. We met up with a friend of ours (Link) to do some exploring... In a city about halfway from Berlin to the Baltic, we had some potentially nice spots on the map.

We met near the first location, parked our car, transferred the gear and drove the rest of the way using just one car. This first location was a huge abandoned underground WWII shelter. It had been built below a large factory that during the war produced transport equipment and anti-tank weapons. Parts of the old factory premises are being used by various companies now, so we had to be careful not to be too obvious regarding our endeavor.

We had to walk a while, and the rain didn't really get better. After a while, we reached a small patch of forest. We walked along a brick wall until we arrived at a steel door. Behind this door - stairs.

The metal stairs were wet from the rain, and we had to walk down about three floors until we reached the bunker.

The size of it was amazing. The ceilings were at least four meters high and the dimension of some of the rooms suggests that this wasn't merely an air raid shelter - maybe it served as storage or even as an underground production facility for the factory.

The signs on the walls are from the later use as a central shelter for civil defense of the factory during the cold war.

We were happy to have gotten out of the rain and spent a considerable amount of time checking out the bunker. It is, however, safe to assume that there are some more underground facilities directly beneath or at least near the factory. But we had planned another location, and the increasing rain forbade further extensive exploration of the area. So this will have to wait for the next time we're near the place...

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

Tour Report: Soviet Communications Bunker

As I've announced in my last post, there was more to the Soviet garrison than the garrison itself. A bit detached from the main area we discovered a rather large bunker.
It was a communications bunker that had nothing to do with the main garrison, but was a completely different location.
The Soviets had their bases separated into various sectors with different secrecy and security levels. The system was so effective that soldiers working in one sector never knew what was going on in the other sectors. This enabled the Soviets to have facilities of different security clearance in relative proximity to each other and using the same infrastructure.
This particular bunker was one of the main hubs for communication of the Soviet army in Germany with the command in Moscow and has an effective surface area of almost 800 square meters.

To reach the bunker, we had to stray a bit off course and walk for a while until we reached the main entrance. It had been filled in with sand to seal it at some point, but of course, someone had burrowed through and made a way in.
We had to crawl a little, but we found the bunker in pretty good condition. Of course, copper thieves had been at work here, but the overall state of the bunker really was okay. It was a really cool place to explore, and I do hope for the opportunity of a revisit sometime soon!


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

Here's a short video we made during our explore of this interesting relic from the cold war:

And here are some of the photos I took. Remember, it was completely dark so we had to work with flashlights :)

Tour Report: The City in the Woods

For the second day of our urbex tour through the Northeastern part of Germany back in November of 2017, my wife and I had planned something big. Well, for us it was. We were going to explore one of the largest Soviet garrisons in Eastern Germany. During the Cold War, more than 15.000 Soviet soldiers and civilian personnel were stationed here, so the place is actually way too large to be explored on one day in late November.
But we wanted to at least check it out; it had been on our list too long!

We got picked up early by our friend Torsten from North Urbex. The ride took a little more than two hours, and we arrived at our destination a few minutes before ten in the morning.
Our parking place was near the outer perimeter of the oold garrison, and we had to walk the rest of the way - about three kilometers on a straight road right into the woods.
It took us about twenty-five minutes to walk to the first buildings. We had a map of the garrison, so we were able to find certain buildings that we wanted to visit first without having to search for a long time - very valuable if you only have a few hours of sunlight.

We made a plan to cover as much ground as possible in the time we had and started out at the kindergarten/school of the garrison. From there, we made our way to the theater, the large gymnasium and the mess hall.
We checked out the laundry house, went past the water works and the storage bunkers for nuclear weapons that were stored here in the late 1950s/early 1960s and in the 1980s, until we got to a very large communications bunker that we also had on our list. This bunker wasn't part of the garrison, so I'll be covering it in my next post here.

As the sun started to set, we began walking back toward the car. After all, you don't want to meet a sounder of wild boars in a forest when it's dark.
We had done everything right - as we arrived at the car, it was pitch dark. We checked the GPS, and we had walked about sixteen kilometers during the few hours we were there - and there still was a large part of the area that we hadn't covered.
I do hope that we'll get the chance to go there again soon - before more parts are demolished and renaturated.
It was an amazing explore - a very interesting historical location, perfect weather and great company. And in addition, we didn't meet another soul. Being alone in a place like this is always a very special feeling for me.
Below you'll find a few photos from the garrison; I'll show the large bunker in the next post, so stay tuned!!


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