Tour Report: The Green School

We had had this location on our list for quite some time, but never had the opportunity to visit it until our summer vacation in 2020. The abandoned school in Saxony had been empty for over 15 years at that point. For most of that time, it lay virtually untouched in a deep slumber; the first pictures had appeared online only a few years before our visit. On the eve of our excursion, there was a barbecue at the husky farm, and our host's two (adult) grandchildren had expressed a desire to accompany us on the tour – a wish we were happy to grant. The two had already accompanied us on a trip a few months earlier, and we were delighted to have the extra company again.

So we set off in the morning after breakfast. The journey took us about an hour and a half. The abandoned school is located in the middle of a residential area, so we first had to find a parking space. While it was still relatively cool when we left, we realized when we got out of the car that it was going to be another really hot day. It was still morning, but the thermometer was already showing 30 degrees Celsius.

The next step was to find an entrance to the abandoned building.

Many of the windows on the ground floor were boarded up with thick wooden planks, and entering from the street would have been very conspicuous anyway. So we walked around the building and looked for an entrance in the courtyard. The courtyard was completely overgrown after so long. We had to search for a long time, but then we discovered an open window that led to the basement. To get to this window, we had to cross a ditch next to the building. It was in the shade, which made it very damp and partly muddy, and as a result, there seemed to be billions of mosquitoes there.

Behind the basement window, it was quite a long way down, but someone had been kind enough to leave a ladder there so that we could climb down without too much trouble.

We began our exploration from this basement room.

Unfortunately, there weren't many remnants of the school's former use, such as school desks, blackboards, and chairs—the school was basically swept clean. In this respect, most of the rooms were relatively uninteresting from a photographic point of view. However, the large main staircase, which gave the school its “stage name,” was really a great sight. The sunlight did the rest to set this area off beautifully. The sports hall with its large windows and parquet flooring also provided a beautiful motif – even though a few teenagers had once gone to great lengths to destroy this place with a bonfire.

In total, we spent about two hours exploring every room in the old school. Then we left the building the same way we had entered it and made our way back to the husky farm.

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

Tour Report: Linoleum Factory "Smell of Chemistry"

This place can be explored officially, and that is what we tried during our summer vacation in 2019. We didn't have a phone number, so we just drove by on the way from another location. It was a pretty long drive along winding roads through the forests of Saxony. As we arrived at the impressive building, we had high hopes of being able to explore it within a few minutes. We parked the car at the main gate, looked around and found a sign with a phone number. No one answered. We heard a phone softly ringing in one of the buildings, but it seemed like no one was around. We tried a few more times in the slim hope that maybe someone was in the bathroom and would open the gate for us shortly. This hope was dashed; no one responded to our calls.

So we set out to explore an alternative location. After about 15 minutes, my cell phone rang. It was the owner of the linoleum factory who had seen our call on the phone. He was indeed not in the restroom, but had been grocery shopping.

We asked if a tour was still possible, and after he agreed, we immediately turned around and drove back.

At the factory, we were received by his wife, who went through the formalities with us (declaration of exemption, rules of conduct, obolus, etc.). Afterward, she briefly explained to us where and how we could move around in the building, gave us the tip to definitely look at the laboratory and let us in.

Since it was already relatively late in the afternoon, we hurried to be able to look at as much as possible in sufficient light.

The place is really incredible. Large production rooms, machines, almost no graffiti or vandalism, great decay - and chemicals. I have only visited one other place in all these years that had a similar level of chemical exposure. The smell in some areas was almost unbearable, and given the age of the substances, I can imagine that they are not necessarily healthy...

But something like that has never stopped us before, so we went from area to area, room to room, looking at everything.

We did not find the laboratory.

Fortunately, we met the owner in between, and she explained where we would find it.

At the end we chatted with her a bit, and as a special surprise she allowed us to take one of the beautiful French glass bricks we were so excited about.

Despite the probably non-negligible health risks, it was a really wonderful location - lots to see, great colors, friendly owners, and a goodie at the end - what more could you ask for?

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

Tour Report: Recreation Home "Mountain View"

Somewhere in the Saxon hill country near the Czech border rises a mountain on which a remarkable building between tradition and modernity was erected. It was built in the late 1920s and served first as a recreation home for the workers' youth, later as a camp for the "Bund Deutscher Mädel" and in GDR times as an SED party school.

We had decided to pay a visit to the building during our summer vacation 2019 because of its striking architecture.

However, getting there was not as easy as we had imagined. A lot of construction sites and closed roads and paths prevented us from taking the direct route to the site, so we ended up taking almost an hour longer than planned.

Eventually we did arrive, and in the absence of a normal parking space, we parked the car at the edge of the field next door.

The grounds and buildings were wide open, so we didn't have to overcome any other obstacles as we explored.

Even though there was no longer any furnishings and the building looked as if it had been at least partially gutted in the course of construction preparations, we could sense its former glory: The main entrance is reminiscent of a festival hall, there is a high, impressive festival room with a stage, and large panoramic windows and other elements have a strong reference to the surrounding landscape.

After exploring all the rooms, we went back to the car, packed up our gear, and discussed which way back would be best given the problems on the way there.

The end of the story was that Birthe uttered the magic words "Then I'm a construction vehicle!" and took the short route directly across the construction site. Luckily it was the weekend and there were no construction workers on the road :)

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

Tour Report: The Malt Factory

I had seen this huge abandoned malting plant up close a couple of times before when I passed it riding a train, and of course I had seen a lot of photos on the internet, but I'd never had the chance to explore it myself - until that day back in August of 2017.
My wife and I had walked past it a couple of days earlier to check for a way in, but the place was not so abandoned after all. On one side, there is an active railway area (the one I rode past on), and parts of the factory premises appeared to be in use as well. We could've easily entered the place, but we weren't sure how far the active parts reached and how quickly we could be spotted once we were on the premises - after all, there were apartment buildings with balconies across the street...
We gave up. This looked too risky.
We walked along the surrounding wall one more time, when a possibility arose! We managed to get permission for a semi-illegal entry.
I'm not going to go into the details, but it involved a phone call that we had to promise never took place...

Two days later, after we had dropped off my mother-in-law at the train station, my wife and I drove back to the malt factory and took the easy way in.
Once on the premises, however, it was hard to find access to the main part of the factory. There were a few open doors to some of the smaller parts, but the corridors to the central production facilities were walled shut.
It took us some time to find an opening, but the floor seemed very unstable. Remembering the story we'd heard about a photographer who broke through a floor in this place a few months earlier and had to be freed by the fire department wasn't really beneficial for our decision-making process at that moment, either.
In the end, I squeezed through the hole in the wall and my wife stayed behind. In the end, the floor was safe, but you never know - and it is good that at least one of us has some common sense ;)
The reward for my recklessness were a couple of nice shots of some remaining machinery and the "real" production halls.
After I had safely returned to my wife, we went back the way we had taken to get in, got back to the car and drove back to the hotel.
A successful day of exploring ended with a nice dinner at the Restaurant "Hüftgold", where we'd had dinner once before during our stay. This was a nice way to finish our trip to this area of Germany before we headed to the Harz mountains the following day.


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

Tour Report: The Leather Factory

Since our exploration of the abandoned meat factory was cut a little short, there was still some time left to visit another spot before we had to drop off my mother-in-law at the train station for her ride home.

We decided for an abandoned leather factory in a small town bordering a large city. The drive wasn't too far, and so there still would be enough time to drive to the train station after we'd finished our exploration.

We drove to the address that I had found out for this location, and we could see the old leather factory from pretty far away. The surrounding area looked a little different from what I had seen on Google Earth during planning - a supermarket had been built where I suspected the access to be... We were lucky, though - it was Sunday, and there was hardly any cars parking on the supermarket parking lot, so we had a nice place to park ourselves. A truck was parked next to the fence separating the supermarket from the industrial ruin. The hole was right next to the truck, whose driver was either sleeping or not even in the truck, but we still tried to be as quiet as possible while sneaking past the truck's door and slipped through the hole in the fence.

We hurried across the open field towards the factory building and found an open door right away. We were in and started our explore. Lots of cars and pedestrians were passing the factory during the time we were in there, completely unaware of our presence. We explored the place bottom to top. Considering the region in which it stands, the building is still in relatively good shape. There are plenty of graffiti, and about every piece of metal has been stolen, but the vast rooms, the arched windows and the sunlight gave the old ruin a nice atmosphere to take photos.

About two hours after our arrival, we had finished checking out all rooms of the abandoned leather factory, and we went back to the car.

We drove to the train station, dropped off my mother-in-law, and after that, my wife and I were off to the next location, so stay tuned for the next tour report...

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