Tour Report: Soviet Airfield "Hunter's Game"

We had successfully found and explored the command bunker of the local fighter division and were ready to head through the woods to explore the garrison part of the airfield. The bunker was at the far end of the airfield, so we had to walk for a while.

After a few hundred meters, we could see a figure between the trees. There was also a car not too far away. At first, we thought it was a forestry worker, but when we saw a few more men in the distance, we realized that there was something going on. There really wasn't any way to hide or take a long way to not be spotted, so we decided to play it openly and walk up to the guy as he saw us.

Our usual approach of being friendly didn't work, however. It turned out that there was a hunt going on, and we had just stumbled into it. The guy was pretty mad at us and became rather unfriendly. To make one thing clear: On the path that we used to enter the area, there were no locked gates, no "Do not enter" signs and no signs that there was a hunt going on - although the guy insisted that there were. His statements varied from "You've broken in!" over "You've ignored the signs!" (to which we answered that we would gladly show him that there were no signs) to "I'm calling the police!". We told him that he can surely call the police, but there were no grounds since it was an openly accessible area. Then he told us that if we each gave him twenty Euros, he would let us go. At that point, we just laughed and went back to the car. On the way, we checked if we had overlooked any signs, but there positively weren't any.

So much for exploring the garrison. But we didn't want to go home empty-handed, so we drove around to the other part of the airfield with the runway, airplane shelters and various workshops. This part of the area, too, was easily accessible, so we took our time to explore everything we could find - making sure that we stayed far away from the hunting party.

Well, at least we saw parts of what we had come for - and some parts of the airfield hopefully still remain to be explored some time in the future.

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