Tour Report: Estate House "Field of Reeds" [Revisit]

Just three weeks after our first visit, we found ourselves returning to the old manor house once again.
Our initial exploration on Boxing Day, accompanied by my mother and mother-in-law, had been a wonderful experience.

Unfortunately, I hadn't brought my camera with me and had to rely on my aging phone for photographs. Since we still had a few weeks between our trips in early January and our planned holiday in mid-February, we decided to squeeze in one more small adventure.

A second visit - especially so soon after the first - is usually a rather relaxed affair. The surroundings are already familiar, and there are fewer surprises waiting around the next corner. Instead of focusing on navigation and orientation, you can fully immerse yourself in the atmosphere of the location.

This return to the abandoned manor was no exception. From the moment we arrived, everything felt comfortably familiar. And because we already knew the layout of the building - and this time weren't accompanying any first-time visitors - we could take our time and focus entirely on photography.

The weather was noticeably better than during our first visit. The sun occasionally broke through the clouds, casting beautiful shadows across the rooms and hallways and creating some wonderful opportunities for photographs.

For more than an hour and a half, we wandered through the manor once again, exploring every floor and revisiting our favourite rooms. Eventually, with memory cards full and another memorable exploration behind us, we headed home.

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

Tour Report: Soviet Tropospheric Broadcasting Station L.

After thoroughly exploring the dusty brickworks - and making sure to stay out of the shepherd’s way - it was time to move on to the next location.

This site was one of several Soviet bunker complexes constructed during the Cold War near a former Third Reich air munitions facility. In addition to a large training ground, the area once contained various command bunkers, combat control positions, and several communications bunkers.

The structure we had chosen to explore was the site’s former tropospheric radio relay station.

As is often the case, we only had a rough idea of where exactly the bunker was located, or whether it would even still be accessible. We parked nearby and continued on foot toward the patch of forest where we suspected the complex to be hidden.

Before long, we realized we were in the right place: through the trees we spotted the ruined building that housed the entrance to the relay station.

At that exact moment, a black pickup truck drove past us and onto the property. An older man stepped out and began loading cut tree trunks onto the back of the vehicle. That immediately ruled out the standard approach to entering the site.

So we were left with three options: abandon the visit entirely, wait for him to leave — or simply walk over and ask.

We chose the third option.

The man turned out to be the owner of the property. He explained that the smaller section of the bunker complex - the crew bunker - had been sealed off as a bat habitat and was no longer accessible. However, he told us we were welcome to explore the communications bunker itself.

Simple enough.

We entered the decaying ruin, while the owner called after us that he still had an interesting story to tell once we came back out.

Inside the building, a staircase led down into the basement. One section looked like an ordinary brick cellar, while the other connected directly to the fortified relay station.

The bunker itself is relatively small. It consists of two prefabricated structures of the Soviet USB type and offers around 100 square meters of usable space. Given the remote location, the protection level was probably fairly modest by military standards.

What stood out most was the near-total absence of vandalism - the rooms were almost spotless - as well as the remarkably intact light barriers throughout the facility. These small plastic or rubber curtains were commonly used in bunkers instead of doors whenever full hermetic sealing was unnecessary, but light discipline between sections still had to be maintained.

After finishing our exploration of the bunker, the owner showed us something particularly unusual — a feature rarely encountered today.

In the cellar beneath the staircase, a small room had been separated off with a brick wall. You can see it on the second photo below. Between the top of the wall and the ceiling remained an opening barely 30 centimeters high. Rusted hinges on either side indicated that this gap had once been sealed with a barred hatch.

When the owner first took over the property, the tiny windowless room behind it still contained a metal bunk and a bucket.

It was, quite literally, a makeshift Soviet detention cell.

None of us had ever seen anything like it before, and it was difficult not to reflect on the conditions under which some Soviet soldiers must have served at sites like this.

On the way back to the car, we spent some time walking through the surrounding forest to see whether any remains of the former Soviet fuel depot could still be found. We had little success, though - apart from a few traces of the old roads, very little remained visible. Then again, perhaps we simply weren’t looking carefully enough.

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

Tou Report: Brick Factory "Dusty Stuff"

After exploring only one location on New Year’s Day, we decided to slowly raise the bar and visit two spots the following day.

We had picked out an abandoned brick factory and a former Soviet communications bunker. The brickworks would be our first destination.

After a drive of a little over half an hour, we arrived at the site and started looking for a place to park. There were no nearby residential areas, no public parking spaces, and the village itself was some distance away, so we decided to simply leave the car on an unused field opposite the property.

The brickworks was not fenced off, and judging by the overgrown vegetation, nobody had been there in quite some time. The first building we came across was the former owner’s house. At the time of our visit, it was completely boarded up and securely locked, with no obvious way inside. We didn’t bother trying any further and moved on.

Next, we started exploring the factory buildings themselves - and what we found left us genuinely surprised. There was no vandalism, no graffiti, and hardly any signs of previous explorers. Instead, the site was still filled with countless small remnants of both business and private life. We found tools, booklets containing industrial production guidelines from the former GDR, medicine packaging, furniture, and even a few old machines. Many of the documents dated back to the 1950s.

Everything was covered in a thick layer of dust, which is why I later gave this place the nickname “Dusty Stuff.”

From a photography perspective, the location had a few nice highlights, though nothing particularly spectacular unless you were interested in digging through the many documents and details scattered throughout the buildings.

Still, we spent quite a while inside the old brickworks. Before leaving, we walked once more through the ring kiln, then made our way back to the car.

To our surprise, the shepherd had arrived in the meantime. He kept his sheep on a nearby field right next to where we had parked. As expected, he didn’t look particularly pleased to see us coming from the abandoned factory, though he didn’t say anything. We greeted him politely as always, and he simply grumbled a brief “Good day” in return. At least he didn’t start asking uncomfortable questions, so we quickly loaded our gear into the car and headed off toward the next location.

And there, another encounter was already waiting for us — but more on that later...

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