The first spot was a tricky one. It actually consists of three parts. One is an old manor house. The other is a bunker that sits practically in the back yard of the manor house. And then there was the third building. We had only seen the large structure on Google Earth during the planning phase for the tour, but we had no clue what it was.
Due to the three different spots in one location, it seemed to be a promising place to start our tour, and conveniently enough, it was right on the way to our friend, so it wasn't even a long detour.
Upon our arrival, we could see right away that the abandoned manor house wasn't so abandoned anymore. There were workers on scaffolds renovating the whole thing. So the main building was out of reach for an exploration. But knowing about the other two potential places on the grounds, we asked one of the workers if it was alright to go walk around the area and take some photos, and he said yes.
So we went back to the car to get our gear, when a car drove past us right onto the grounds. Inside the car was a grim-looking man who eyeballed us pretty intensely. After he'd passed us, we made our way back on the premises - where the guy was already waiting for us. He asked us what we were planning to do, and we told him about our conversation with the workers on the scaffolds. He said, the workers didn't have anything to say and that we weren't allowed on the premises. Feeling that arguing with him was going to be unrewarding, we opted for a different approach. We accepted what he said, but started a conversation about the history of the whole place. It took some time, but then he started opening up. The guy was the groundskeeper and he really knew a lot about the place. The mansion was being renovated by the new owners and through the proper channels could even be visited legally - if you called ahead...
He was kind of surprised that we knew about the bunker, but also told us a couple of things about that. The large building that we didn't know anything about used to be a school, he told us - and in the end, he allowed us to explore it.
This was another fine example that if you are open-minded, friendly and don't run around in camouflage hiding as soon as someone sees you, you can sometimes gain more than you initially thought!
So we took our time to explore the place undisturbed, which took about two hours. After that, we got back into the car and drove towards a nice dinner at our friend's house.
To find out more about the history of this place and to check out all the photos, click the button below.
love every one of the photos. can't even pick a fave.
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