In March of 2019, we took a few days vacation to go on a short tour. Our first stop was our good friend Jens' place in the Harz Mountains. We arrived Saturday afternoon, and for the start of the weekend, we got our "party room" ready, went to shop for groceries, chopped some wood to keep warm for the night and went to roam through the abandoned sanatorium on the premises. In the evening, we had a barbecue in the teepee, and if I remember correctly, it got a bit late that night :)
In the morning, we had an unhurried breakfast, before we got on our way to check out a location that we had on our list for quite some time. It was a supposedly completely unvandalized apartment with the entire furniture from the 1970s. I had seen pictures of it, but I hadn't thought that it was anywhere near. But it was.
We drove to the location. There was an ensemble of a couple of houses, all of which seemed abandoned. There was no light in the buildings; it all looked dark. As we looked through one of then windows of the old guest house right at the street, we were startled to see a face appearing from out of the dark. After the scare, we all started laughing, and the man came out, and we started talking. It turned out that he and his wife had bought the buildings to turn the place into a multigenerational residence complete with vegetable garden - but they got into huge trouble with legal obstacles and the administrative machinery... So they were doing all that they could to keep the place alive and standing. We had a really good talk, but it was sad to hear that a great concept was on hold due to weird laws and official pedantry.
At some point, we asked the two about the 1970s apartment that was supposed to be in one of their houses...and it was! We asked if there was the possibility to check it out and take a few pictures, and they gave us their blessing - if we were careful! The building was more than 300 years old and so ramshackle that even parts of the basement had already collapsed. The apartment actually was the only place in the entire building that still had fairly solid flooring.
When we opened the door, we were amazed at what we saw. Although some of the furniture obvisously had been decorated sometime in the past, the apartment still looked authentic and was in great shape. Yes, the floor still felt a bit wobbly, but it was okay to walk on. The apartment wasn't big, but there were quite a few details, so we did spend a considerable amount of time taking photos before we came back out.
The owners hadn't expected to be paid, but we didn't want to leave without contributing to their project, so we left a small donation, which they really hadn't expected, and they were really happy about it.
It had only been a small location, but seeing and photographing it and meeting really nice people was enough for us to call it a day in therms of exploring and return to Jens and his sanatorium to enjoy the wonderful ambiance on top of the mountain...
To find out about the history of this place and to check out all the photos, click the button below.
