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.

Tour Report: Home of the Rustbucket [DK]

Pretty close to a dirt racing track lies this abandoned farm that we visited together with Pixelcracker and Lost Places in Schleswig-Holstein und Umland on our tour through Denmark in May of last year. It was the third spot of the tour and although unspectacular from the outside, it turned out to be a pretty neat place.
There was a race going on on the dirt track, so the surrounding roads were all full of parked cars almost right up to the location that we were headed for. So we blended in nicely when we parked right in front of the place.
We had hoped for a little more than just the remains of an old farm, but that's what it was. There weren't even any real remains of the farmhouse, only two ramshackle barns were left, one of them with a collapsed roof. It didn't look too promising...
But the first thing we saw when we entered the larger of the two barns was an old threshing machine. You don't see that everyday, so it was a pretty nice find. There were some other tools and relics to be found in the large barn as well, but the second highlight presented itself in the second barn. There were the remains of an old horse-drawn wagon with beautifully decaying wooden wheels - and an old automobile. It took some time to find out what type of car it was, but after a while, we came to suspect that it is a Chrysler/Talbot Sunbeam built in the late 1970s.
At some point during our explore, two little girls entered the barn, and my wife did her best entertaining them in Danish until we were finished exploring the place so they wouldn't get hurt climbing around in the old barn.
After two rather empty and a bit disappointing spots on that tour, these two barns were a nice find because of the nice decay and the nicely preserved machine we found in there. It was a good sign for the next location, I think...


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

Tour Report: The First House on the Left

Here's the next report from the tour through Denmark I took in April of last year together with my wife and our friends Pixelcracker and Lost Places in Schleswig-Holstein und Umland. We had finished exploring the first two spots we had planned and were on the road to the third spot on our list.

As we took the turn onto the road where the "House of the German" (the planned spot) was located, we spotted another obviously abandoned house. It was the first house on the left, hence the rather unimaginative title of this report ;)

Two spots. One on each side of the road. We had some trouble deciding which one to explore first. We went for the one we spotted first, so we parked by the side of the road and gathered our gear.

A lot of the abandoned houses we explored in Denmark have had their front or back doors unlocked. It was no different in this case, so it was really easy to enter.

The house wasn't as spectacular as we had hoped - there wasn't any furniture left and the decay wasn't as advanced as we'd expected.

But there still were some nice shots to be taken - my personal favorites were two old liquor bottles standing on the window sills on the upper floor.

We didn't spend too much time in the place, and when we were finished, we just had to walk across the street to check out the next spot - so stay tuned for my next report :)

To check out all the photos of this neat little place and to find more galleries, click the button below.

Tour Report: The Inn by the Cemetery [DK]

I had gotten a tip regarding this abandoned inn somewhere in Denmark and I had seen some promising photos of it before, so it was only logical to put it on the schedule for our trip back in April of last year together with Pixelcracker and Lost Places in Schleswig-Holstein und Umland.
It was about a half-hour drive from the first location, and by the time we arrived, the sky had cleared up and had made way for the sun which had been hiding behind clouds the whole time since we left home that morning.
The abandoned old inn is located right next to a cemetery and a church. There was a large public parking lot right next to it, which was used by churchgoers as well as people visiting the cemetery. It also seemed to be a pickup for bus travelers, so there was enough activity for us to not arise any suspicion.
The challenge was that the access which we discovered during our first inspection was perfectly visible from the pretty busy road...
It was only a small window, so we'd have to get in one at a time.
Everytime there was no car coming, one of us climbed in through the window while the others were hiding behind hedges or waiting around the corner.
I'm sure we were more than conspicuous, but somehow we made it in without being seen.
Despite well more than five years of abandonedment, the condition of the place was fantastic. A lot of the interior was still there, and the decay was only slowly beginning to make its way into the building, starting with the rooms on the weather side of the inn.
After about two hours, we had seen everything and we left the building the same way we'd used to get in.
There was another abandoned builduing across the street which we checked out. It obviously belonged to the inn as well, probably as accomodation for the staff. There was no way in at this point, so we got back into the RV and headed for the next location. A few months later, though, we managed to find acces during a revisit of the inn. There was also a cat, but that's a different story ;)


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

Tour Report: The House of Chairs [DK]

It was time for a tour through Denmark again in late April of last year. About ten days after our successful exploration of an abandoned Soviet airfield in Eastern Germany, my wife and I met up with our friends Pixelcracker and Lost Places in Schleswig-Holstein und Umland to explore the abandoned parts of the picturesque Danish countryside.

As most of the times when we go touring through Denmark, we met in the parking lot of a large mall in Flensburg near the border early in the morning.

We all climbed aboard Pixelcracker's RV and headed across the border. The Danish government had re-established border controls to prevent refugees to illegally entering the country, which always leaves a stale taste in my mouth  after so many years of crossing European borders unchecked.

Anyway, it was only a short drive from the border to the first location that we had on our list. It was an unremarkable, small house in a small town. Since there weren't too many houses near the place and the Danish people (neighbors) unsually don't seem to be bothered by urbexers, we parked pretty close to the house and gathered our gear.

The back door was open, just like in most of the houses in Denmark that I've visited, and we entered.

There had obviously been a little amount of vandalism, but the general state of the place was still pretty much original. There weren't too many details to be photographed, but the chairs that could be found all over the house did make for some nice pictures.

Due to the lack of documents and such, there was no possibility for me to dig into the history of the place and find out who were the owners and what happened to them. The house appears to have been abandoned for a couple of years, but the electricity was still on...

To check out all the photos of this neat little place and to find more galleries, click the button below.