Tour Report: Railway Repair Factory H. [Revisit]

We'd had our first "encounter" with this abandoned factory in summer of 2015, when we had it on our list of possible explorations. At that time, however, we could see that the place was pretty busy - we could see construction workers and a security service. They weren't in any of the buildings that we wanted to explore, and we probably could have gotten in without being seen, but we decided that the risk was too high.

About a year later, I got the chance to try again. I was in town to meet some friends, and I took the opportunity to go for a bit of exploring. I found a pretty cool access to the place and was completely alone the entire time - it was amazing!

So when we were in the area during our summer vacation in 2018, we decided to try again, so that my wife also had the chance to explore this neat place.

It was a really hot day (just like every day was a really hot day during that particular summer...), so we tried to find a parking spot that didn't involve walking too far. As we had gathered our gear, we headed towards our access - it was still the same access that I'd used more than two years earlier, and it was still open!

As we entered the abandoned factory halls, silence engulfed us. It seemed as if the thick, hot air swallowed up every sound that tried to make its way in from the outside. The sun took care of the lighting for us, and nature had painted the walls and floors in the most lovely shades of green.

The place hadn't really changed, it still was as beautiful and colorful as I remembered it. We took our time walking through every single factory hall, exploring every corner and enjoying the fact that we were completely alone in this huge place.

After about three hours, we left the place and got back into the car. We still had to drive about 150 kilometers to the next station our summer tour. For the next day we had planned to meet up with a friend to explore a few relics of the Soviet occupation in Eastern Germany - so stay tuned!

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

Tour Report: Porcelain Factory "Souvenir"

As I've said - we had two abandoned porcelain factories on our list for that day. After we'd finished exploring the first one, we grabbed a quick snack before getting on the way to the second one. It was a route of only about 100 kilometers, so we didn't expect it to be a too long drive.

What we hadn't accounted for was that the route took us through the mountains which meant that we got stuck behind a truck more than once and had to wait to be able to pass it somewhere on the winding road. So this was already a bit of a nuisance. But when we got to a full closure only five minutes before reaching our destination, we were really annoyed, because we had to take a detour of about thirty kilometers.

Well, alright. So we took the detour - again along winding mountain roads, so it was an additional half an hour before we even got close to the porcelain factory.

The factory was on the edge of town at the end of a residential street. There weren't any inconspicuous places to park, so we parked the car a bit further down the street, so we may have just been tourists that went for a walk in the picturesque little town. We got our gear and walked up to the old factory building. Finding a way onto the premises was easy - but to get to the access into the building, we had to fight our way through a lot of vegetation, thorn bushes and over old timber.

As we finally entered the building, we were really disappointed. The first room that we entered was a typical industrial ruin in which people had dumped a lot of trash, old chairs, electrical appliances, used clothes and torn fabrics. Only a few molds pointed to the former use of this factory.

So with only little hope, we went on to explore the rest of the building.

Only a few rooms later, our disappointment had vanished and made room for enthusiasm. There was fantastic decay, many old relics to be discovered and in the end, this place was even better than the other factory that we had explored only hours before.

The afternoon sun made for a fantastic light in many of the rooms, and only the fact that we had a reservation for dinner and still had a "few" kilometers to drive was reason enough to get us to leave at some point.

This truly was a great location to explore, and although parts of it were already collapsing, I hope that there will be the chance for a revisit in the future.

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

Tour Report: Porcelain Factory S.

This was the first abandoned porcelain factory that we ever explored. It was the fifth day of our summer vacation 2018, and we had decided to check out two abandoned porcelain factories that were roughly in the area. Roughly in the area meaning that from the place where we had spent the night, we still had to drive more than 150 kilometers to the first location.

It was a hot summer day (just like every summer day that year was a hot day), and the sun was burning down as we arrived at the old factory. There was something like a public parking spot not too far away, from which we could see the wide open gate that would lead us onto the premises. Pretty close was a neighbor with a lawnmower going in straight lines back and forth, so that when we went into the direction of the factory, he might see us upon entering, so we stayed out of sight while getting our gear ready, when suddenly a large truck pulled up and parked right between us and the factory gate...

We waited what would happen. There was nothing written on the side of the truck, so we couldn't see if maybe the guy even had something to do with the old factory or was just there to take a break and have lunch. Well, I went up to him and asked him if he knew anything about the factory. He said that he didn't and was in fact just having lunch. Whew! So we wouldn't be bothered by him, leaving only one challenge - evading the neighbor.

So as the neighbor had finished one row of mowing and had just disappeared behind his house, we hurriedly walked past the truck and through the gate to be able to disappear behind some high bushes in the factory's courtyard. It worked nicely. We just needed some time to find a way in, because a lot of the doors and windows were nailed shut

When we had finally discovered an open access, we first found ourselves in the workers' locker room. The smell of old shoes and clothes was still in the air as I unpacked and set up my camera. Starting in the locker room, we tried to find a good way through the various parts of the building, but the place was somehow contorted, so it was hard to find "the" correct way, and we were frequently entering rooms that we had passed already.

The place was pretty big, and there were so many scenes to be shot! Some rooms and halls looked as if they'd only be abandoned for a short while, whereas others displayed incredibly colorful decay that supported that fact that the place had been abandoned for more than twenty years. It also surprised us that there was relatively little vandalism and graffiti - not that we would complain about that!

I don't think that we've seen everything that this place has to offer, but we still had the second porcelain factory on our list, so when we thought that we'd explored most of the place, we called it a day and went back to the car to drive the 100 kilometers to the next location - 100 kilometers that turned out to be longer than we thought due to construction work and detours en route...so stay tuned for the report of the adventure that followed...

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