Tour Report: Rest Home "Fernview"

After visiting our friend Jens and revisiting "his" sanatorium in the Harz mountains, we still had two more days to go on our short tour in March of 2019, so we took the opportunity to visit my mother-in-law and check out a few more locations.

On top of a hill in a small town lies an abandoned rest home. I had seen lots of photos from there, but the most "famous" scene is one room with an old armchair and ferns growing up the wall behind it. So of course, when we were in the area, we had to stop to check it out.

As we drove up to the huge building and saw the broken windows and piles of trash on the outside, we didn't have high hopes to see anything interesting. The place was wide open, so we didn't really go through the trouble of looking for a parking place far away and found one pretty close to the building. Now we only had to find a way in.

There was no fence, and almost every window was broken, so this was an obvious way in - but lazy as we are, we looked for an open door, and we found one right away!

As we entered, we were once again shocked and amazed what vandals can do to a building. There was no single room in its original condition, all remaining furniture had been moved around - either to create the better photo, or to create the better party room, or simply to create chaos. There had even been a fire in some of the rooms, and local kids apparently also used the place as "canvas" for their "graffiti"...

We still took the time and walked through the entire place, and we even managed to get some pretty decent shots - although the vandalism was omnipresent. And then we found the room with the ferns on the wall.

Well, that was a bit disappointing. Firstly because the armchair had lost one of its "arms", but mostly because the ferns weren't nearly as green as we had expected. Yes, it was March, and spring hadn't really started yet, but I suspected that the reason was the immensely hot and dry summer of 2018 that had dried up a lot of the plants.

So after about two and a half hours, we went back to the car and drove off to the next location.

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

Tour Report: Hotel "Broadleaf's Court"

This was a memorable one. I had known that this spa hotel was abandoned, but I had never seen any photos from this place, so we really didn't know what to expect when we pulled up on a rainy day in November of 2018.

The hotel was obviously abandoned and apparently had been for some time. Some windows were boarded up, but most of them were intact. Yet, at first glance, there was no way in. We took some time to wander around the premises, looking for open doors and windows, and we did in fact find a window that apparently had been forcefully opened in the past - but it had been sealed shut again, so this wasn't a way in either.

Well, we had tried everything and hadn't found an access, and we had actually decided to call it a day, when I wanted to make another round to check for open windows. What can I say? It worked! I didn't find any open windows, but we got in nonetheless. I am not going to tell you exactly how we managed it, but I can tell you that it involved bribing a security guard that suddenly appeared :)

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

Tour Report: Hotel "Rockinghorse"

In November of 2018, we paid a visit to my mother-in-law, and since she has been going on explorations with us since 2013, we decided to go check out some abandoned places.

The first spot we had chosen to explore was an old abandoned house on the edge of a small town. It had been turned into a bar or club of some kind, and the combination of an old house and a possibly modern bar seemd like a promising combination. We parked the car in town and walked to the location, because there was no real parking place close to the building - and of course, we didn't want to arise suspicion with our out-of-town license plate.

So we walked to the old building and checked for a way in. There was none. We checked every inch on the outside, but there was no open door, no open window or hole in the wall where we could enter, so we had to leave without having seen anything.

Luckily, the the next option we had on our list was an abandoned hotel only about half an hour away, so we hoped that we were going to have more luck there. The hotel sits on a hillside right next to a highway. We could have parked right in the driveway - but this is something that we don't really like to do, so we looked for a parking place a bit farther away, and found one in town pretty much right across on the other side of the highway. So we gathered our gear and walked across the bridge that had led people right to the hotel and restaurant for many decades in the past.

As we approached the abandoned hotel, we noticed that many of the windows were broken and thrash was lining the path that led up to the building. We didn't have high hopes regarding what we were going to see - and we were right.

Although the outside (with the exception of the broken windows) still looked pretty good and displayed beautiful architecture, the inside had obviously been ravaged by vandals for quite some time. Furniture had been broken, and there was some damage from a fire that had been made in the fire place and that probably got a bit out of hand.

The rooms had clearly been used by squatters and/or junkies - we found artifacts pointing to both. Surprisingly enough, there was very little "real" decay. Apparently, most of the roof had withstood vandalism, weather and time for eight years between the closing of the hotel and our visit. Only a few spots displayed the early stages of water damage and the corresponding decay.

However - despite the lack of decay and the amount of vandalism, we took our time checking every room inside the place, and we did manage to get some photos to bring home. We finished our exploration with a thorough inspection of the outside of the building, before we headed back to the car and headed for the next location.

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

Tour Report: Villa Dr. Anna L. [Revisit]

Our visit to the abandoned hotel took less time than we had expected due to the high level of vandalism, so we still had a little time and daylight left to explore another place on that day in November of 2018. Driving to a location however was out of the question, because it would have taken too much time, and we probably wouldn't have arrived until after dark. So we decided to take the easy option and just walk down the street a bit to pay a visit to the famous (or infamous) Villa Dr. Anna L.

I had checked out this place in 2016 together with a friend while my wife and her mother were having coffee, because they were too scared to get caught at the time. But this time, it was raining a bit, so there weren't a lot of people outside, and my wife felt a little safer.

Entering the house was easy - the front door was open.

Upon entering, I could already see that the years that had passed since my first visit hadn't been kind to the old house. More things had been stolen, others had been moved around, and the overall condition of the house hadn't improved either. Stairs were shaky, and some floors we didn't even dare to step on, especially on the upper floors.

Still - there were many interesting things left, and in the end, my wife was happy to have seen the place - after all, she is a pharmacist, so a doctor's office is an interesting place for her to explore.

And in spite of the vandalism, we still managed to get a few nice shots that made this visit worthwhile.

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

Tour Report: Hotel "The Green Mile"

For years, I'd heard about this spot, when in November of 2018, we finally were in the area and decided to pay a visit to this abandoned hotel.

To be quick - due to the condition of the place, our exploration was far less uplifting than we had hoped for. But let's start from the beginning. We had explored an abandoned gravel pit - apparently just in time not to get caught by the security service - and we still had some time left, so we checked our list and saw that there were a few spots pretty close, and we decided to explore the hotel that had been on this list probably for the last five years.

The photos that I had seen displayed the deterioration due to vandalism - but we still had some hopes of finding some furniture and some decay. Our hopes went somewhat downhill when we drove past the building and saw that there was a huge broken window right in the front, which of course is an invitation for every vandal, copper thief and arsonist. Still, we parked our car on the public parking lot right across the street, waited until there was no one walking past and jumped through the broken window.

Upon entering what seeemd to be the reception and/or dining area, we saw that we had set our hopes too high. Apparently, someone had started to clean out the place in preparation for maybe a renovation or even a demolition. The chairs and tables had been stacked up, and as we walked along the corridors, we saw that all the rooms had been almost completely emptied out.

Only a bunch of files were left in the basement - and of course, there were signs of vandalism everywhere. Broken glass, graffiti, the scorched remains of the spa area that had fallen victim to a fire...it wasn't a pleasant sight.

The view from the top floor with the swimming pool made it up for us - but only a little bit. It is always sad to see this kind of destruction.

About six months after our visit, I read in the news that the place had been locked down to secure it and start with the construction of around 50 apartment units in the old hotel. If this renovation ever took place - I'm sure I don't know.

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