June 27, 2025

Tour Report: Goodbye, Lenin!

Lenin's head stands in an overgrown meadow in a small town in Brandenburg - alone, half-hidden behind a bush, as if history itself had become entangled here. The stone bust rises silently from the ground, almost absorbed by nature, and yet it is impossible to miss. The sight of it is irritating and captivating at the same time: in the middle of this hidden area, far from any official place of remembrance, it seems to be a fragment from another time - resistant, forgotten and yet unbrokenly present.
It is as if the head has found shelter in this place - a kind of silent exile after the end of the ideological age that once elevated it. The bushes and growing trees seem like a natural veil, like they are protecting something that does not want to be found. The fact that this memorial has survived hardly seems coincidental: since the withdrawal of Soviet troops, the region has been systematically cleared up - memorial plaques removed, statues toppled, traces erased. But here, in a no man's land between consciousness and oblivion, the head remains. Neither officially preserved nor destroyed, it seems to have stolen itself from the field of vision of time - like a silent witness waiting for something that will never happen again.

Not far away are a few residential buildings that were expropriated by the Soviet army after the Second World War. After reunification, they underwent extensive renovation and were converted into modern living spaces. Behind the largest building is a small green area with playground equipment - a place of everyday life. But behind it begins an undesigned wilderness left to its own devices. The bust lies right on the threshold between a cultivated habitat and a natural mess - without a pedestal, marked by decay. Its nose is damaged and a gaping hole in the back of its head reveals a hollow interior with only dried leaves and scattered pebbles. The view inside is sobering - and yet there is something mysterious about it, as if this place holds a secret that eludes quick access.

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June 19, 2025

Tour Report: Peenemünde Power Station

This decommissioned power plant on the island of Usedom is not an abandoned place. It is a museum. The power plant was built to supply the nearby oxygen factory with enough electricity to produce the fuel for Germany's A4 (V2) rockets. It is the last remaining complete building of the Peenemünde testing facilities and conveys the industrial character of work within the armaments projects. The entire building is designed as a freely accessible monument.
On a beautiful day in June 2020, we drove to the island together with a friend who does not partake in the hobby of urban exploration, but does have a historical interest. In the way, we made a short stop at the ruin of the oxygen factory, only to find out that it wasn't accessible anymore. It would have been nice to have another look at it, but this way, we got to the museum pretty shortly after it opened that day.
A short path leads from the parking lot to the power plant site. Among other things, a V1 (flying bomb) and a V2 are on display on the forecourt. You can also take a look at a few wagons from the former factory railroad.
Upon entering the museum, we were almost completely alone in the huge halls of the old power station, which was a blessing, because I could take photos using a tripod without people walking around in the scene. We took the opportunity and explored every accessible area of the main building before exiting again and checking out the technical building.
As the museum was populated by more and more visitors, we took some time to look at the exhibits in the outdoor area before walking over to the harbor to check out the old Juliet-Class Soviet submarine.
This was a really nice day with sunny skies, warm weather and - contrary to most of our other explorations - without the risk of getting caught by security.

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June 12, 2025

Tour Report: Brick Factory T.

The story of how we stumbled across this abandoned brickworks almost exactly five years ago is quite funny. A few years earlier, we had bought a small tree for our garden at a farmers' market - a "Speierling" (Cormus domestica, or sorb tree).
You have to know that our “garden” is a garage yard with lots of individual pots, and we planted the tree, which was not even half a meter high at the time, in one of these pots.
The little tree thrived magnificently and grew bigger and bigger over time. At first we planted it in a larger pot, but this eventually became too small for the tree.
We didn't have a larger pot - and as the sorb tree is one of the rarest trees in Germany (in Austria and Switzerland it is even on the list of endangered species), we wanted to place it where it would have a good and long life.
At a barbecue evening, a good friend said that there was plenty of space in her parents' garden and that they would be happy to take the tree.
So a few weeks later, we loaded the tree into our car (which was an adventure in itself) and drove towards the North Sea coast. Our friend's parents were waiting for us with a lavishly laid coffee table and even tried to fill us up with schnapps, which we gratefully declined. In any case, it was a great afternoon with lots of good conversation, and when we got talking about our hobby, our friend's father casually mentioned that there was a dilapidated brickworks just across the road.
Shortly afterwards, we set off with him (he accompanied us because he knew all the neighbors and could therefore make sure that no one called the police on us).
The brickworks was only about 5 minutes away and was really dilapidated. The chimney had either been demolished in the past or had collapsed; in any case, only a small stump was left. The ring kiln was still in good condition and had not collapsed; only some garbage had been dumped there in the past.
All that was left of the other buildings of the brickworks were a few ruined remains. Apparently the site had also been used by people at some point, who stored scrap metal and a few old agricultural machines there. In order not to try our hosts' patience too much, we only took a few photos and then headed back.
In any case, this was a nice surprice location and exploration - and our tree has since found a great new home - we still get a photo of it from time to time!

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June 2, 2025

Tour Report: Hunting Chateau "Top of the Hill"

On the way back from our tour in May 2020, we took a short trip to a low mountain range before heading to a dear friend's house to end our vacation there. An abandoned hunting lodge, which was built at the end of the 17th century and has had a very varied history over the centuries, stands on a ridge in said mountain range. This hunting lodge was the destination of our short excursion that day.
After taking a road with (I think) 36 hairpin bends to get up the mountain, we reached the small side road to the old castle. As we were coming from the north, we didn't drive past the buildings in use opposite and remained unseen.
To avoid being seen from the main road, we parked directly behind the castle.
An entrance was quickly found - as was the realization that many parts of the building were in serious danger of collapse, while other parts already had collapsed.
The condition didn't make it easy for us to move through the building, because the collapsed areas meant that we always had to take detours, for example because a piece of the floor was missing in corridors and we had to find our way across another floor.
That's also why we were denied a view of the highlight of this location during this visit - the musicians' gallery in the church pavilion. We just didn't find the right way through the building.
We postponed this pleasure until our next visit, as we had an appointment for dinner and had to leave after a while.

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May 9, 2025

Tour Report: Electrical Control A.

After we had finished our second visit to the former mineral oil works, we had actually planned to go straight back to the Husky camp. So we got in the car and drove along the lonely paths that used to connect the individual areas of the huge plant. Today, they no longer cut through a huge industrial area, but only mostly empty, steppe-like wasteland. Shortly before we left the site in the direction of the main road, we saw a group of trees and bushes on the right-hand side, behind which there was apparently another building that we hadn't even planned to see. Of course, we immediately stopped to take a closer look.

It was a classic industrial building, but its purpose was not recognizable from the outside. But the door was open, so we were able to solve this mystery quickly.
It was the control room for the power supply of the former mineral oil plant. The building was full of large control cabinets and everything needed to supply a large industrial plant with many thousands of volts. There were switches and distributors for various distillation stages of mineral oil production, for lights, sockets - and even for the street lighting!

Unfortunately, copper thieves removed all the cables from the building shortly after the plant closed - but the graffiti artists seem to have overlooked this building until now - there were no (or almost no) graffiti. Apparently, the place is rather quiet - so much so, that birds have begun to nest in the cabinets and the controls. We even found a nest that had eggs in it!
This was really a nice unplanned addition for our tour, and we got some nice photos from this place.

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May 1, 2025

Tour Report: Mineral Oil Processing Plant A.

After going on an extensive exploration tour on my wife's birthday in May 2020, we also took a short trip to a deserted place on my birthday. But this time there were also a few huskies with us! As the CoViD rules in force at the time meant that you were only allowed to travel to another federal state with a valid reason - for example because of work - we had been given a work assignment for our vacation. Two of our friend Ebby's huskies had recently passed their breeding tests, so he had officially commissioned us to take a few photos of them.
We wanted to take these photos on my birthday, and we thought that the remains of the abandoned mineral oil plant would make a nice backdrop. The route there is quite short, so we were only on the road for about 20 minutes. The site is freely accessible and offers a few nice motifs: there are still many oil tanks of various sizes and the former pump house to be discovered.
From our parking lot, we walked out onto the grounds with the two dogs and looked around for suitable scenery to set the stage for the dogs.
After we had taken some pictures of the dogs, we took them for a short walk around the grounds before heading home, as it was very warm that day and we were out in the midday sun, which would have been too exhausting for the huskies in the long run.
Birthe and I took advantage of the good weather and drove straight back to the industrial ruin shortly after arriving at the husky farm to explore the grounds extensively.
Surprisingly, the site is not only freely accessible, but the tanks can also be climbed. Some have an external staircase, others have the maintenance ladder inside. As you never know exactly how the condition and stability of metal changes over the years, I was extremely careful, but was still terrified that something might go wrong. In the end, everything went well and I got some nice pictures.
After exploring the tank site, we got back in the car to drive back, but then spotted another building that we hadn't explored yet...but that's in the next post!

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April 23, 2025

Tour Report: The Lock Ruin

Not an “abandoned place” in that sense, but still a very interesting place is the building we visited in May 2020. It is the ruin of a lock structure that was once intended to become part of the Elster-Saale Canal, which had been planned since the 1920s. However, construction was completely halted in 1943 due to the Second World War.
Now only the massive reinforced concrete structure remains as a reminder both of great technical achievements and of a time of war and oppression - just a few meters away are the remains of a delousing chamber, indicating a labour camp.
As the ruins are an official monument, there will be no report here about finding a parking space, sneaking around and spectacular entrances. We took a look at the huge concrete walls in great weather and walked along the paths that lead around the ruins and were more than impressed by the sheer size of the structure. You rarely get to see something like this.

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