Tour Report: Porcelain Factory "Souvenir"

As I've said - we had two abandoned porcelain factories on our list for that day. After we'd finished exploring the first one, we grabbed a quick snack before getting on the way to the second one. It was a route of only about 100 kilometers, so we didn't expect it to be a too long drive.

What we hadn't accounted for was that the route took us through the mountains which meant that we got stuck behind a truck more than once and had to wait to be able to pass it somewhere on the winding road. So this was already a bit of a nuisance. But when we got to a full closure only five minutes before reaching our destination, we were really annoyed, because we had to take a detour of about thirty kilometers.

Well, alright. So we took the detour - again along winding mountain roads, so it was an additional half an hour before we even got close to the porcelain factory.

The factory was on the edge of town at the end of a residential street. There weren't any inconspicuous places to park, so we parked the car a bit further down the street, so we may have just been tourists that went for a walk in the picturesque little town. We got our gear and walked up to the old factory building. Finding a way onto the premises was easy - but to get to the access into the building, we had to fight our way through a lot of vegetation, thorn bushes and over old timber.

As we finally entered the building, we were really disappointed. The first room that we entered was a typical industrial ruin in which people had dumped a lot of trash, old chairs, electrical appliances, used clothes and torn fabrics. Only a few molds pointed to the former use of this factory.

So with only little hope, we went on to explore the rest of the building.

Only a few rooms later, our disappointment had vanished and made room for enthusiasm. There was fantastic decay, many old relics to be discovered and in the end, this place was even better than the other factory that we had explored only hours before.

The afternoon sun made for a fantastic light in many of the rooms, and only the fact that we had a reservation for dinner and still had a "few" kilometers to drive was reason enough to get us to leave at some point.

This truly was a great location to explore, and although parts of it were already collapsing, I hope that there will be the chance for a revisit in the future.

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