Tour Report: The House in the Woods

After our unexpectedly successful visit to the former correctional facility, we still had some time for another exploration before heading home. We didn't really have anything else planned when I came across a tip about a small, old house hidden deep in the woods. Even better, it was right along our route home. That's how it should be!

We had no idea what to expect, and we weren't anticipating anything particularly spectacular. As a result, the chances of being disappointed were relatively low.

After about an hour of driving and 50 kilometers on rural roads, we arrived.

The destination was indeed well hidden in a patch of woodland, and there were no designated parking areas nearby. We managed to find a spot to pull off the road and park our car on a relatively dry patch of ground.

Then we set off through the woods. The walk turned out to be shorter than expected, and within just a few minutes, we could make out the house between the trees.

At first glance, it appeared to be a self-built structure. An inscription above the entrance confirmed this impression:

Built in 1957 – Destroyed by Force in 1963 – Rebuilt in 1966

Inside the house, we found some remaining furniture, dishes, pictures, and other items. There were plenty of traces of its former occupants, but unfortunately, nothing that revealed who had lived here or for how long.

A small shed next to the house contained a few tools and old bicycles. A little farther into the woods, we came across several old agricultural plows and a few other items, including an old scythe.

One possible explanation is that the house was originally built without official permission. Perhaps its owner or occupant repaired or collected old equipment and bicycles? We simply don't know, and ultimately, any such explanation would be pure speculation.

Whatever the story behind this place may be, the little house had escaped vandalism. That alone made the visit something special. We also thoroughly enjoyed the walk through the woods!

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

Tour Report: Prison "Down on the Farm"

When we visited this abandoned prison in September 2020, it was firmly sealed off. We couldn’t find any way inside. We also met a man in the surrounding area who told us that the cameras covering the grounds were still active and that the police regularly patrolled the site. According to him, people had already been arrested for attempting to gain unauthorized access to the facility.

The electrical cabinet opposite the prison’s main entrance was still powered, as the deep humming noise clearly indicated. So the claim about the active cameras didn’t seem all that far-fetched.

We therefore decided not to take any chances and to return at a more suitable opportunity.

Whether the timing was any better or not, we had no idea when we found ourselves standing in front of the prison walls again about eight months later. The electrical cabinet was still humming, and there still appeared to be no way in. Nothing seemed to have changed.

So we walked once around the outer perimeter and enjoyed the short walk in the beautiful sunshine.

I don’t remember what made me do it, but on our way back to the car, I gave the large sliding gate a good pull – and, much to our surprise, it opened without any resistance!

Now we had a problem.

We had already been on site for quite some time and had no idea whether the cameras were still active or whether the police might already be on their way. There was also the possibility that security personnel were currently patrolling the prison and had simply left the gate open – which would have meant a serious risk of finding ourselves unable to leave if the gate was locked again.

The latter seemed relatively unlikely, though, as there wasn’t a single vehicle anywhere on the entire site apart from our own.

But there was no way we could pass up this unexpected opportunity.

Without going back to get any of our other equipment, we started what could best be described as a quick, tactical-style exploration. Our plan was simple: just our phones for taking pictures, a quick run through the buildings, back out through the hopefully still-open gate, and then get away as quickly as possible.

And that’s exactly what we did.

We moved really fast and certainly missed quite a few potential photo opportunities – but we made it. There wasn’t actually all that much to see anyway. As the prison was relatively modern, the interior was fairly sterile and functional, and most of the rooms were almost completely empty.

In a way, the place itself helped us keep our visit within a very tight time frame.

But the lack of photo opportunities and the time pressure certainly didn’t diminish the value of our exploration. For one thing, you don’t get the chance to see the inside of a prison all that often. But what really made this visit special was the sheer luck of finding that gate open – followed by such a spontaneous and unplanned exploration.

It is definitely one of those stories we will keep telling for years to come.

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Tour Report: Mansion "Hunter's Dream"

The second and final stop on our tour at the end of March 2021 was an abandoned manor house. We had discovered it more or less by chance the evening before, while looking for abandoned places in the surrounding area. The manor, which is now in a very dilapidated condition, consists of three sections. The main building dates back to the late 17th century and was built on even older walls. The extensions were added in the mid-19th and early 20th centuries.

Architecturally, the building therefore represents the development of Mecklenburg manor houses over several centuries, which makes it quite special in itself.

It took us about an hour to drive there from the brickworks we had visited earlier, but the journey also brought us considerably closer to our accommodation, so we were already heading in the right direction.

The manor is located on the edge of a very small village between two lakes. There were no inconspicuous parking spots nearby, so we had no choice but to park directly opposite the manor. We simply hoped that nobody would pass by, or that anyone who did would assume we were heading for a walk in the nearby park.

The manor was not fenced off, and we were able to enter the grounds without any problems. It looked as though the vegetation around the building had been cleared relatively recently. The grounds were neatly cleared, and there were tire tracks from agricultural machinery. Of course, the lack of dense vegetation meant that we could not approach under cover and had to move quickly, hoping to remain unnoticed. On the other hand, it also made finding an entrance surprisingly easy: an open basement vault provided access to the ground floor.

We reached the grand entrance hall via a staircase and two rather dilapidated small rooms. The hall was divided into two areas: the large entrance section, with a wide staircase leading to the first floor, and the “Great Hall”, featuring an ornate ceiling, heavy wooden doors and a locked entrance leading towards the garden and park.

On the first floor, directly above the hall, was another large room with a dark wooden coffered ceiling. Several corridors branched off from this room, leading to numerous smaller rooms.

It was impossible to miss that the building had undergone many additions and alterations over the centuries. This was particularly evident in some rather unfortunate modifications made during the GDR era, when the manor was used as a refugee home, village shop, nursery and residential building. Walls had been added, others removed, and in some areas it was difficult to tell which part of the manor we were actually standing in.

There were almost no remnants in the form of furniture, documents or similar items. Nevertheless, there were still some interesting details to discover, including an intricately designed curved iron staircase, heavy wooden doors, stained-glass windows and empty bottles of various herbal liqueurs - although those clearly dated from the period after German reunification.

Simply because of its size, we spent a long time exploring the old building, making sure we had seen all of its rooms. Looking back, the most interesting aspect was undoubtedly being able to recognize the different periods in which various parts of the manor had been built or modified.

Since we had never heard of the manor before our visit and had not seen any photographs of it, we had no great expectations for the exploration. But I think it was definitely worth it!

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

Tour Report: Brick Factory "City Forest"

At the end of March 2021, we visited a dear friend in the German state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. Naturally, we took the opportunity to explore a few abandoned sites in the surrounding area.

Our first destination was an abandoned brickworks, about an hour's drive from our friend's home.

The region has a long tradition of brickmaking, thanks to its rich natural clay deposits. Clay has been extracted here since as early as the beginning of the 13th century, and the brickworks itself can trace its history back to around the 16th century. Its heyday came much later, towards the end of the 19th century, when industrialisation transformed brick production on a much larger scale.

Over the decades that followed, the works grew into a sizeable industrial operation. Like many brickworks, it relied not only on the clay pits surrounding the factory, but also on a narrow-gauge field railway to move raw materials and bricks around the site. Some of the locomotives once used here survived long after the works themselves had fallen silent.

After the end of the GDR in 1990, the brickworks finally closed. In the years that followed, some parts of the site were given new uses, but most of it was simply abandoned and left to decay.

When we reached the former factory grounds, our first task was to find somewhere to park. Fortunately, this proved surprisingly easy. Parts of the surrounding area are used for recreational activities—there is even a climbing park in the nearby forest—and consequently, there are several parking areas in the vicinity.

From where we left the car, we only had to follow a small path through the woods. Before long, the remains of the old works appeared between the trees.

There were a few concrete barriers intended to prevent vehicles from entering, but there was no real fence or continuous perimeter anymore. The site had, quite literally, been left open to the forest—and to anyone willing to walk in.

The factory buildings were in a sorry state.

Some structures, including the old ring kiln, had been completely demolished, while others had only partially survived. Judging by what remained, we suspected that at least some of the old bricks had been salvaged and reused as building material elsewhere in the surrounding area. There was something strangely fitting about that: bricks that had once left this place by the millions were now becoming part of something new, while the factory that had produced them slowly disappeared.

In some places, we were slightly puzzled by the condition of the site. Certain areas looked as though someone had actually cleared them out. After I later came across photographs taken in early 2019, I began to suspect there might be an explanation.

In February 2019, a 14-year-old girl was seriously injured in an accident on the abandoned site. I suspect that the rescue operation and the investigations that followed may have resulted in certain hazardous materials being removed. In particular, asbestos-containing debris that was clearly visible in some of the older photographs was nowhere to be seen during our visit.

The further we ventured into the former works, the more obvious its decline became.

Many of the roofs had collapsed. Machinery and technical equipment had largely vanished, leaving behind little more than fragments of the industrial infrastructure. Walls stood without buildings, buildings stood without roofs, and in places it was difficult to tell where the factory ended and the forest began.

Nature was steadily reclaiming everything.

Fortunately, spring had not quite arrived yet. The trees were still mostly bare and the undergrowth had not yet awakened, which made exploring the site considerably easier. A few weeks later, the same paths would probably have disappeared beneath a wall of thorny vegetation.

Despite the destruction, there were still plenty of fascinating details to discover. The remains of the old production facilities, fragments of brickwork and concrete, and the traces of a once-busy industrial complex offered occasional glimpses into what this place must have looked like when it was still operating.

Some of the surviving structures were difficult to identify with any certainty. Decades of decay, demolition and vegetation had erased much of the original layout, leaving us to piece together the function of individual buildings from whatever clues remained.

One particularly intriguing structure stood on the southernmost edge of the surviving site. Raised above the ground on a massive concrete framework, it looked almost more like a bridge than a building. At first glance, I wondered whether it might have been connected with loading or the dispatch of finished bricks.

It was only later that I learned that the structure had apparently been used as a drying shed during the later years of the brickworks. Its elevated, open construction makes considerably more sense in that context: fresh bricks needed plenty of air circulation before they could be fired. The field railway may well have played a role in moving the bricks to and from structures such as this one, although by now the tracks themselves have almost completely disappeared.

It was fascinating to stand among these remains and imagine the activity that once filled the place. Where we found weeds, fallen leaves and silence, there would once have been the constant movement of workers, machinery and small railway locomotives, with freshly moulded bricks passing through the various stages of production before eventually leaving the works.

By the time we visited, almost all of that had vanished.

Still, there were enough traces left to make the exploration worthwhile. We tried to look at everything that was still accessible, even though much of the site had already disappeared beneath the advancing vegetation and decades of neglect.

And then, towards the end of our exploration, the weather decided to make things a little more atmospheric.

A steady rain began to fall.

By that point we were already wet, a bit tired and partially covered in whatever dirt the abandoned brickworks had managed to throw at us, so to speak. So we made our way back through the trees, leaving the ruins behind us in the rain.

Another forgotten industrial site, slowly returning to the forest.

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Tour Report: Air-Raid-Shelter "Dripstone"

The first time I stepped inside this bunker, I was fascinated.

I had seen mineral formations in abandoned bunkers before, but never anything remotely like this. What we found inside was completely unexpected.

It was early March 2021 when a friend told me about a bunker not far from home. The entrance was open, although the structure would normally only have been accessible through an opening in the roof.

That was enough to make us curious.

We set off almost immediately, and just 20 minutes later we were already looking for a place to leave the car. Despite the rural surroundings, finding a discreet parking spot turned out to be surprisingly difficult. Eventually, we managed to find somewhere suitable and set off on foot.

Rubber boots were highly recommended - and we soon understood why.

In fact, there were two bunkers of identical design. They had been constructed during the Second World War as air-raid shelters for a labor camp, which housed workers employed at a large oil storage facility nearby. The facility had been developed from the late 1930s onwards as part of the area's wartime infrastructure.

According to the information we had received, the entrance was open.

So we stepped inside.

The history of the site had left its mark.

After the war, the camp was used as a reception centre for displaced persons. The bunkers themselves were later deliberately rendered ineffective as shelters by the British occupation forces. Their roofs and walls were perforated with pneumatic tools, destroying their original protective function.

Those openings changed the bunkers in another, completely unintended way.

For decades, rainwater, soil, leaves and other organic material had been making their way inside. The corridors were now filled with muddy earth and decomposing vegetation, while plants had taken advantage of the holes in the ceiling to grow inside the concrete structure.

But then we entered the rooms alongside the corridors.

And suddenly, the bunker looked completely different.

The floors were covered by between 10 and 20 centimetres of water. Along the damaged concrete walls, beautiful mineral formations had developed — and they covered much more of the bunker than I had expected.

There were stalactites hanging from ceilings and walls, while stalagmites had formed on the floors. Some of the formations had joined together, creating intricate structures that looked almost like the interior of a natural cave.

Except they weren't.

These formations had not taken centuries or thousands of years to develop. They had appeared within just a few decades.

A cave made of concrete.

The reason can be found in the concrete itself.

Due to material shortages during the Second World War, concrete containing a relatively high proportion of lime was used in the construction of many structures. Over the decades, water slowly penetrated the porous concrete. As it passed through the material, it dissolved minerals and carried them towards the interior of the bunker.

Once the mineral-rich water reached the walls and ceilings, it began to evaporate, leaving behind tiny deposits of calcite. Drop by drop, year after year, these deposits accumulated — eventually producing the remarkable formations we found inside.

The result was a strange combination of military architecture and a geological process normally associated with natural caves.

Outside, the bunker was slowly being reclaimed by vegetation.

Inside, the concrete itself had begun to grow its own cave.

There was, however, one less pleasant aspect to the experience.

The decomposing organic material in the corridors produced a strong smell of decay, despite the relatively cold water covering the floors. It was certainly not the most pleasant environment to explore.

But that wasn't going to stop us.

We made our way through every room we could access and spent a considerable amount of time photographing the formations, the flooded interiors and the traces of the bunker's past.

By the time we were heading home, one thing was already clear to me:

I would have to come back.

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Tour Report: Farmhouse "Calendar"

After exploring the forester's cottage, we returned to our cars and headed for our next destination: an old abandoned farmhouse on the very edge of a small rural settlement.

About 30 minutes later, we arrived and parked roughly 100 metres away near a former railway crossing. Judging by its condition, no train had passed through there for a very long time.

The abandoned farm was neither fenced nor otherwise secured, allowing us to enter the property without any difficulty. Shortly after arriving, we met two young women who had apparently come up with the same idea. During a brief conversation, we learned that they had already finished exploring the site. They also admitted they were a little proud to run into an urban explorer who was fairly well known within the scene.

After saying goodbye, we began our own exploration, starting with the outbuildings along the roadside. Whether they had served purely as garages and storage buildings or had once been used for other purposes was impossible to determine. What we did find, however, was an astonishing amount of clutter. Containers, bicycles, old shoes, radios, and even trophies from dog shows were scattered throughout the buildings.

We then turned our attention to the farmhouse itself, where the amount of abandoned belongings was even greater. Piles of old newspapers, countless calendars, clothing, and household items lay everywhere. Much of the furniture had been overturned, and it was obvious that someone had searched through the cupboards and drawers in the hope of finding valuables.

The resulting chaos meant that there were hardly any worthwhile photographic subjects left inside the house. Far more interesting were the numerous magazines, documents, and working records related to cattle breeding. Among them were several issues of the magazine Rind im Bild and even a cattle insemination record from 1989. These discoveries strongly suggested that the former owner had been a cattle farmer and that the farm was still in active agricultural use at least until the late 1980s.

A visit to the barn reinforced that impression. We found the typical drinking bowls used for cattle, while an adjoining building still housed a machine for mixing animal feed.

Part of the barn had been filled with large quantities of cut firewood, alongside a few pieces of old furniture, including worn armchairs. Whether the wood had already been stored there by the farmer remains unclear. By the time it was stacked inside, however, the building could no longer have been used to house livestock. It is therefore equally possible that a later owner or occupant had simply converted part of the barn into a wood store.

Unfortunately, we were unable to uncover any reliable information about the history of the farm, so any conclusions beyond these observations would be purely speculative.

With our exploration of the abandoned farmhouse coming to an end, so did our day of urban exploring. We returned to our cars and began the journey home - unaware that just a month later, the farmhouse would be destroyed by fire.

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