Tour Report: Air-Raid Shelter Berlin (III)

In February 2019, I had to travel to Berlin for work, so I decided to arrive a day early to meet up with my good friend Toeppi from "Fotodokumentationen" to check out a few abandoned places. Toeppi had arranged for us to be granted access to an otherwise locked air-raid shelter from World War II to take some photos - a rather rare opportunity in the city of Berlin.

I took the early morning train to Berlin where Toeppi was already waiting to drive us to the location. Once there, we met up with another party of interested persons and the guy who had the key.

The bunker had been constructed in a manner that made it look more like a house - it had a pitched roof and even a console frieze. That way, it could be integrated more easily into future developments that the Nazis had planned for after the war.

As the door opened, we first stepped into a kind of airlock that separated the access door from the rest of the bunker. Behind the airlock, there was the main stairwell with the corridors. I was surprised at the condition that the building was in. You could see that it was once a bunker, and that it still was the original concrete, but the various uses after World War II didn't pass without a trace - the walls had been painted over, and even some of the walls of the individual rooms had been removed to change the layout of the floors. There was even electric light, so I didn't really need to get out my flashlight while roaming through the rooms.

In the end, this wasn't the most spectacular bunker that I've ever had the pleasure of exploring, but it still is a part of Berlin's history. It was an interesting place to check out in any case - especially since not too long after our visit, the door was forced open, and the interior was vandalized. So the photos you see in this post are likely to be some of the last ones that show the bunker in its "post-war-glory".

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

Tour Report: Cable Factory K. [Revisit]

On the second day of our spontaneous tour in June of 2018, we took it a little slower than the day before and explored only one location. It was really hot outside, so we didn't want to have to walk too far.

We decided to check out an abandoned chemical factory that I'd visited in 2014 and that wasn't too far away. We took the subway and the bus to get there, but as we arrived, we saw that every single door was sealed tightly. No chance to get in. So we chose to go for a revisit in the old factory next door. I had visited his place together with my brother in 2014, but my wife didn't have the chance to come with us at the time, so this was a nice opportunity for her to check the place out.

Although much had changed in the surrounding area (new apartments had been built along with parking lots), the access that we had taken four years earlier still worked nicely. The place consists of two huge factory halls with the adninistration building in the middle between them. We entered the factory in the first of the two halls.

Of course, there was a lot of graffiti, but the spring had put a lot of green plants into the hall, so it almost looked like a jungle. Nature reclaiming industrial sites is something that I really like to photograph, and we took our time to look at everything.

As we exited the first hall to get to the administration building and the second hall, we suddenly stood right in front of a yellow container - just like the ones frequently used by security services... We couldn't see if anyone was inside, so we decided to take the risk and just walk past it. When we had almost reached the next building, the container door opened and the security guard came out. He had us.

It is our habit never to run from security, but always be friendly and polite, admit to trespassing and saying that we're sorry. In most cases, when the security guards see a rather expensive camera and two people in their mid-forties, they usually believe that we didn't trespass to vandalize anything and let us go. It was the same in this case. The security guard was in his twenties, and we really had a nice talk with him for about a half hour before he wanted to let us out of the main gate.

I told him that we'd forgotten to take a selfie in the factory hall and asked if he'd give us five minutes - and he did. This was a good example of how polite and friendly behavior can help you to not get in trouble even if you got caught trespassing.

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

Tour Report: Villa "Lakeside"

We had saved the most spectacular spot for last on our tour with our friend Toeppi in June of 2018. We had seen two really cool bunkers, a doctor's villa that was more a dump than anything else, and we'd desperately tried to find a way into an abandoned water works facility that was more than tightly locked. But this one was to be the grand finale...

Situated in a very wealthy area with lots of villas that belong to celebrities, we didn't expect this one to be easy.

We parked the car roadside a bit down between a couple of other cars so as not to rise any suspicion. First, we took a little stroll down the street to look like regular tourists while evaluating our options of getting onto the property. In the end, we decided to just jump the fence and quickly run towards the bushes. We waited for the right moment, and then we ran. Finding an open door into the house was easy once we were on the property. We were in - unsuspected and undetected!

As we walked through the empty rooms, we were amazed at the luxury that the former owners must have lived in. This place had it all - an indoor pool, a bowling alley, a boat house, a wine cellar...

We took our time looking through all the rooms, and we were surprised that a nice seafront property such as this one wouldn't find a new owner to take care of it and bring it back to its former glory.

After almost two hours, we finished the tour with the mandatory selfie shot and then called it a day.

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

Tour Report: Doctor's Villa "Sparrow"

 After exploring two underground air-raid shelters from World War II, we decided to explore something above ground and enjoy the weather. We decided to check out the premises of an old lung clinic that also happens to have a very large bunker.

After a short ride, we arrived at the place. Our friend Toeppi called a guy he knew from a movie shoot that took place there a few years before to see if we could get the chance for a legal visit, but there was no chance, so we checked out the area for ourselves.

The place was huge; some buildings seemed to still be in operation, and everything else was tightly locked, so after looking around enough, we decided to head back to the car. On the way, we spotted an old house between the trees. It must have been the villa of the clinic's medical director. In earlier years, it was common that the medical director had a villa on the premises of the clinic - sometimes equipped with a private practice. This house looked "palatial" enough to be the director's villa - and our research later on confirmed our assumption.

We just had to look around for a few minutes to find a large hole in the fence, and after another couple of minutes, we had found a way into the villa.

It was kind of disappointing; the place had been thoroughly vandalized, and there was nothing left that could point to the purpose of the place. We only took a few photos before we left again. There just wasn't a lot to see - but we had one more location on our list that was going to compensate us for this little disappointment, so stay tuned...

To check out the history of the place, click the button below.