Tour Report: The Malt Factory

I had seen this huge abandoned malting plant up close a couple of times before when I passed it riding a train, and of course I had seen a lot of photos on the internet, but I'd never had the chance to explore it myself - until that day back in August of 2017.
My wife and I had walked past it a couple of days earlier to check for a way in, but the place was not so abandoned after all. On one side, there is an active railway area (the one I rode past on), and parts of the factory premises appeared to be in use as well. We could've easily entered the place, but we weren't sure how far the active parts reached and how quickly we could be spotted once we were on the premises - after all, there were apartment buildings with balconies across the street...
We gave up. This looked too risky.
We walked along the surrounding wall one more time, when a possibility arose! We managed to get permission for a semi-illegal entry.
I'm not going to go into the details, but it involved a phone call that we had to promise never took place...

Two days later, after we had dropped off my mother-in-law at the train station, my wife and I drove back to the malt factory and took the easy way in.
Once on the premises, however, it was hard to find access to the main part of the factory. There were a few open doors to some of the smaller parts, but the corridors to the central production facilities were walled shut.
It took us some time to find an opening, but the floor seemed very unstable. Remembering the story we'd heard about a photographer who broke through a floor in this place a few months earlier and had to be freed by the fire department wasn't really beneficial for our decision-making process at that moment, either.
In the end, I squeezed through the hole in the wall and my wife stayed behind. In the end, the floor was safe, but you never know - and it is good that at least one of us has some common sense ;)
The reward for my recklessness were a couple of nice shots of some remaining machinery and the "real" production halls.
After I had safely returned to my wife, we went back the way we had taken to get in, got back to the car and drove back to the hotel.
A successful day of exploring ended with a nice dinner at the Restaurant "Hüftgold", where we'd had dinner once before during our stay. This was a nice way to finish our trip to this area of Germany before we headed to the Harz mountains the following day.


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