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: Auto Repair Factory S. [Revisit]

In 2014, I paid my first visit to this huge abandoned factory. At the time, my wife Birthe hadn't come along, so more than five years later, we chose the place as the starting point of our summer vacation.

I had planned to take the "back door" through an open fence on the far side of the premises that I had taken five years earlier, but since it was Monday, there was too much going on in the surrounding businesses, so we had to look for another way.

We drove towards the main entrance of the abandoned factory. There was a public parking spot pretty near, so we didn't have to walk too far, which was a good thing, since it started to rain the moment we got out of the car. We walked along the fence and the walls of the factory, and after a few minutes, we found a way in. The way we used seemed to be frequented by homeless people who used this part of the factory as accommodation. We didn't want to disturb anyone, so we quickly made our way towards the factory halls.

As I remembered from my first visit, the halls were huge - some of the largest halls I have ever seen. The graffiti had become more over the years, but aside from that, nothing much had changed.

We took our time strolling through the production floor and checking out the parts on the upper floor - storage, workshops, restrooms and break rooms.

At some point, we heard a noise from the outside, and as I looked out the window, we saw a security guard walking across the yard towards the building. He hadn't seen us or anything and apparently was on a routine patrol.

We decided to not make it too difficult for him. We calmly packed our stuff, walked down the stairs into the main factory hall and waited. As he entered, we smiled and waved at him and said hi. We told him that we saw him and wanted to make his job a bit easier, so we had already gotten ready to leave.

At that point, the security guy was completely speechless. I think this was something that never happened to him before. While he walked us out, he asked us how we had gotten in, and he told us a bit about the (at the time) current plans that existed for the place.

He let us out through the main gate, we walked back to the car and drove off to the next spot.

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

Tour Report: Soviet Fighter Command P.

After exploring the command bunker and the corresponding airfield (well, at least part of the airfield), the only "main" part that was missing to get a mostly complete picture of the area was the fighter command. 

It took me a little longer to research the location of this bunker. In the wider area around the airfield, there are some protective structures, such as the aforementioned command bunker as well as the two radio beacons. The fighter control center was of course of particular interest to us, so we started an intensive search while preparing for the tour.

Equipped with the presumed coordinates, getting close to the site wasn't too difficult. If you didn't know that the bunker is in this wooded and overgrown area, you wouldn't think that it was. Well camouflaged, the area is rather inconspicuous for the "layman". A short walk and the first signs appeared in the area: the exhaust pipe of the emergency power system suddenly appeared in the middle of the small forest.

Finding access didn't prove too difficult. The access building nestles against the "bunker hill" like a swallow's nest - but you can only see it when you're really close to it.

Inside, there were stairs, pretty steep and pretty far down. And typical Soviet bunker doors. Arriving on the lower level, we could see that another staircase led back up at the end of a corridor - the way to the second access, that was tightly sealed.

The air was surprisingly fresh down below, but we could still smell the slight smell of burning. In front of the actual main corridor into the protective building there is a small chamber branching off to the right, in which the pre-filter for the air purification was located. Unfortunately, this chamber is completely filled with trash.

The sanitary area is immediately to the right, almost in the first room in the main corridor on the right. Surprisingly enough, there weren't the typical Soviet toilets with a hole in the bottom, but porcelain seats with a real flush! Immediately next to it (also on the right side of the main corridor) are the rooms for the air filter system and the water supply.

On the left side of the corridor, we found the large situation and command room of the fighter command. Here, the air situation was shown as well as the current positions of Soviet air forces. From here, the interceptors were led to the target area - that was the task of those who were on duty here in the bunker.

Apparently, there had been a fire in the command and control room - the walls are covered with soot, the floor was greasy. The smell of fire was still in the air. Obviously, more than one party was held here. The command room is adjoined by two other rooms, which probably served as offices for the radio officers. Opposite these service rooms is the room with the cable entry, the remains of the message distribution system and the empty rooms of the message team.

At the end of the main corridor was the access to the emergency power system and the corresponding control room. The control room had a window to the engine room. We were surprised that the room for the emergency power system was in no way soundproofed and was only separated from the main hall by a steel door - after all, there was a fairly large diesel engine for the power supply - that must have been quite loud.

As you can see in the photos, the explore sounds much more spectacular than my report might suggest - after all, the bunker had been abandoned since 1994 - 25 years at the time of our visit. That's 25 years in which copper thieves, vandals and teenagers have had their way with it.

To check out more interesting galleries of amazing abandoned places, visit my website:

Tour Report: Soviet Airfield "Hunter's Game"

We had successfully found and explored the command bunker of the local fighter division and were ready to head through the woods to explore the garrison part of the airfield. The bunker was at the far end of the airfield, so we had to walk for a while.

After a few hundred meters, we could see a figure between the trees. There was also a car not too far away. At first, we thought it was a forestry worker, but when we saw a few more men in the distance, we realized that there was something going on. There really wasn't any way to hide or take a long way to not be spotted, so we decided to play it openly and walk up to the guy as he saw us.

Our usual approach of being friendly didn't work, however. It turned out that there was a hunt going on, and we had just stumbled into it. The guy was pretty mad at us and became rather unfriendly. To make one thing clear: On the path that we used to enter the area, there were no locked gates, no "Do not enter" signs and no signs that there was a hunt going on - although the guy insisted that there were. His statements varied from "You've broken in!" over "You've ignored the signs!" (to which we answered that we would gladly show him that there were no signs) to "I'm calling the police!". We told him that he can surely call the police, but there were no grounds since it was an openly accessible area. Then he told us that if we each gave him twenty Euros, he would let us go. At that point, we just laughed and went back to the car. On the way, we checked if we had overlooked any signs, but there positively weren't any.

So much for exploring the garrison. But we didn't want to go home empty-handed, so we drove around to the other part of the airfield with the runway, airplane shelters and various workshops. This part of the area, too, was easily accessible, so we took our time to explore everything we could find - making sure that we stayed far away from the hunting party.

Well, at least we saw parts of what we had come for - and some parts of the airfield hopefully still remain to be explored some time in the future.

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

Tour Report: Dairy Company "Stingray"

The abandoned buildings of this former dairy company in Denmark are part of a larger dairy factory that was sold and split up sometime in the past. One part was after that operated by a fish export company, and this other part has apparently been used for various purposes, including storage and auto repairs.

We had started our day of exploring in Denmark with a visit in the part of the factory that had been converted into a fish factory, and since we hadn't seen enough yet, we decided to also try to get a few photos from the rest of the buildings.

It only took us a few minutes to find a way in.

At first, we were a bit disappointed, because the buildings didn't continue the architectural style that we had seen in the fish factory. But the further we went, the more stuff we found.

The place had obviously been used as storage; there were so many things to be seen. Furniture, sewing machines, things that looked like they were used on a movie set, record players...

There also was some nice decay to be found due to a collapsed roof in one of the halls.

The surprise of the day came towards the end of the exploration, when we found what seemed to be a former car workshop. There were a few quite pricey engines lying around - for example a BMW 12-cylinder engine and the engine of a vintage Chevrolet Corvette Stingray.

When we were back at the car and had just packed our stuff, a man walked by and told us not to enter the abandoned places, because the neighbors wouldn't hesitate to call the police...guess we got lucky :)

To check out all the photos from this place, click the button below.