The Soviet Heritage - An Abandoned Garrison in the Woods

We had originally planned to visit three locations on our tour last weekend. I have already presented some photos of the first location and of course more will follow.
The second location proved to be a failure. The mansion we had chosen is already being renovated - which is good in the way that such a beautiful building will keep existing but bad in the way that there positively was no way to enter. Motion detectors, steel doors and cameras prevented any attempt. Lucky us we had the third location in store.

It was just a short drive further, and there it was, appearing through the trees: An almost 530 meter long building (also known as "Kilometerbau") which served as a Soviet garrison during the occupation of Eastern Germany.

Obviously, at some point in the past, the demolition of the derelict building has begun. Parts of it have been torn down almost entirely, but the central corridor is almost completely unharmed by the demolition work. You can see rubble from the demolished parts that built piles in the hallway from the sides. But it's been at least a couple of years since there was any work done.

I really liked this building as there were no apparent signs of excessive vandalism, and we didn't find a single graffiti in the entire area. Only the torn down parts and beautiful natural decay.

Of course, that's not all I have to say about this location, but for now, here are the first couple of pictures.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

A Dark Castle - The Abandoned Neo-Gothic Mansion

We drove to three objects on our tour today, and this one was the first we got to.
At first it was a huge disappointment because there was no way into this magnificent building...until the second part of our group arrived and after a lot of searching, found the way in...
Turns out that the condition looked better from the outside, but there were still a lot of great images to catch with the camera.
As always, for starters, here are the HDR-shots.
I will tell a little more about the history of the object in the following posts.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

Nuclear Fireworks - Happy New Year 2014!

I have the coolest wife in the world!
We had planned to go somewhere dark for New Year's Eve to take some photos and possibly do some lightpainting, but when I came home from work, she had already decided that we would go to the abandoned nuclear weapons depot!
So, we quickly packed our equipment, also some salmon sandwiches and champagne (Hey, it was New Year's Eve!) and drove off to the Special Ammunition Site.
There is no possibility to drive the car directly into the depot, so there is alway a half-hour walk, and it was a little creepy, because there is no light at all, and every once in a while you can see the eyes of an animal in the beam of your flashlight...
Anyway, when we got there, we settled into one of the large bunkers, had some hot apple juice with cinnamon against the cold and started taking photos.

The theme is obvious: Happy New Year 2014!!!