Tour Report: Estate House "Field of Reeds" [Revisit]

Just three weeks after our first visit, we found ourselves returning to the old manor house once again.
Our initial exploration on Boxing Day, accompanied by my mother and mother-in-law, had been a wonderful experience.

Unfortunately, I hadn't brought my camera with me and had to rely on my aging phone for photographs. Since we still had a few weeks between our trips in early January and our planned holiday in mid-February, we decided to squeeze in one more small adventure.

A second visit - especially so soon after the first - is usually a rather relaxed affair. The surroundings are already familiar, and there are fewer surprises waiting around the next corner. Instead of focusing on navigation and orientation, you can fully immerse yourself in the atmosphere of the location.

This return to the abandoned manor was no exception. From the moment we arrived, everything felt comfortably familiar. And because we already knew the layout of the building - and this time weren't accompanying any first-time visitors - we could take our time and focus entirely on photography.

The weather was noticeably better than during our first visit. The sun occasionally broke through the clouds, casting beautiful shadows across the rooms and hallways and creating some wonderful opportunities for photographs.

For more than an hour and a half, we wandered through the manor once again, exploring every floor and revisiting our favourite rooms. Eventually, with memory cards full and another memorable exploration behind us, we headed home.

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

Tour Report: Chateau "Ornament"

Exploring this place was one of those moments that stay with you for a long time.

During our summer vacation in 2020, my wife and I visited the abandoned mansion of a former knight’s estate. Some time before, I had stumbled upon a few photos of its exterior and learned that it had most likely been vacant since the fall of the Berlin Wall. From the outside alone, it already radiated a strange kind of quiet dignity.

We hadn’t seen a single photo of the interior, so we had no idea what awaited us inside. Before heading there, we studied the area on Google Maps, trying to plan our approach as carefully as possible.

At the front, the property bordered a small neighborhood with still-inhabited houses. People lived there. Curtains moved behind windows. Approaching from that side was clearly not an option.

At the back, the grounds extended into a wooded area - but the way from there would have been long and inconvenient, and we weren’t even sure if we’d find a place to leave the car.

That left only one realistic option: a farm located on the neighboring land. It wasn’t ideal, and there was always the risk of being noticed. But since it was a Tuesday, we hoped that luck - and a quiet workday - might be on our side.

And it was.

We found a small parking spot on a side road near the farm. Everything was quiet. No one seemed to be around. With a slight mix of excitement and nervousness, we made our way onto the property.

Finding an entrance took a few minutes. The summer heat was intense, the air heavy and still. Every step through the dry leaves sounded painfully loud, as if the whole world could hear us. For a moment, we froze - but no one came. No dogs barked. No doors opened.

Finally, we slipped inside.

What we found there completely took our breath away.

Although the mansion was completely empty, it had somehow remained untouched by vandalism or graffiti. Sunlight filtered through dusty windows, revealing high arched ceilings, massive wooden doors, detailed stucco work, and incredibly ornate wood carvings.

The woodwork, in particular, fascinated us. From the finely carved wall panels to the decorated columns and stair railings, everything told a story of craftsmanship that simply doesn’t exist like that anymore.

My personal highlight was a huge wooden door, roughly 3 by 2 meters in size, covered in intricate carvings. Standing in front of it felt almost unreal - like facing a relic from another era.

We spent nearly two hours wandering through the building, quietly moving from room to room, trying to absorb every detail before leaving the same way we had entered.

Fortunately, from the photos I’ve seen in recent years, the place seems to have remained mostly unchanged. And who knows - maybe one day we’ll return, just to feel that atmosphere again.

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

Tour Report: Knight's Manor "Blue Sky"

In August 2019, we visited an object that we had long had on our list, but never had the opportunity to visit until this point. It is an old manor whose history goes back a long way. The villa, to which the title "manor" has passed, was built in the late 19th century.

Initially used as an industrialist's villa, over time the building underwent many new uses - as a planned mothers' recreation home, as a Reich Labor Service camp, as a Red Army military hospital, as a school for judges, as a school for the FDJ travel agency, and as a pioneer leadership school.

After a fire devastated the attic in the summer of 2018 and the firefighting efforts caused further damage, we knew that the days of this beautiful building were numbered and included it in our plan for the next summer vacation.

It was a warm day and the journey was uneventful. However, finding a decent parking spot not too far from the property was significantly more difficult. We ended up parking somewhat awkwardly on the edge of an allotment. There were already a few other cars parked there, so we could hope not to attract further attention.

From there we walked along the road until we reached the wooded area that was once part of the magnificent park that surrounded the manor. Through this now very dense forest we crept up to the building from the back. We could hear that the farmed part of the estate was busy, so we kept extremely quiet as we searched for an entrance into the building. Fortunately, there was an open door that was out of sight and hidden by trees.

When we entered the building, we were on the one hand impressed by the princely looking rooms, but on the other hand a little disappointed, because due to the fire many rooms did not look like we had seen in older photos.

The main subject, however - the staircase - was still in quite good condition despite the fire and the extinguishing work. For this, the trip had been more than worth it! Even the ceiling painting, a blue sky with a stylized sun in the center, was still there apart from some damage.

In other rooms, the extinguishing water had caused quite nice decay, so that we could make our way to the next locaton with a good yield of pictures in our luggage.

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

Tour Report: The Poetic Villa

In March of 2019, we were on the way home from a day-long excursion through the northern part of Germany, and we still had a little time and enough daylight to check out one more location. I knew about this place, but I couldn't remember seeing any photos from the inside. The abandoned villa sits on a vast plane right next to a horse farm, which is why I didn't think that we'd have any chance of checking it out, but we tried anyway. There were no inconspicuous parking spaces anywhere near, so we had to operate under the rule that "impudence wins", and we drove right up to the villa and parked right in front of it. Two local cars might look like someone was a potential buyer and looking at the place, we thought.

Now for the way in. The villa looked in great shape - no smashed windows or apparent vandalism - this might be a tough one to get into.

Or so we thought at first.

I went up to the building with little to no hope of getting in -  and the front door was open! This was a pleasant surprise :)

The good exterior condition of the villa was confirmed by the interior. There is some natural decay, but the lack of vandalism has kept most of the humidity out, so the decay is not as advanced as you would expect after more than 10 years of abandonment.

There was no furniture, and apparently, the place was cleaned of trash by an investor at some point. Still, we could imagine the former splendor of this villa where two German "poet princes" met in 1883.

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

Tour Report: Knight's Manor "The Blue Estate"

We're still looking back at our vacation in November of 2018. After a day of touring together with my mother-in-law, we spent the night at her place, before starting the next stage of our trip. On the way from the city of Kassel to our next destination in the Harz Mountains, we stopped to check out an abandoned castle in a small town situated in a valley between two low mountain ranges.

We wanted to check if there was any possibility to explore the beautiful old castle located on the northern edge of the village. As we drove up and saw the castle, our hearts started beating faster - what a beautiful building this was! At the same time, feelings of disappointment started creeping in, because we could already see that there was no way to get on the premises. A high wall and a large gate kept us from entering, and we did not want to sneak across various neighbor's lawns to check if there was a possibility to enter from the other side.

So we were almost ready to get back into the car and drive on to the next stop, when we saw an older man exit one of the outbuildings and walk across the courtyard. We called out to him, and it turned out that he was a kind of caretaker for the place. He lived in the outbuilding and was looking out for the castle because a new owner had bought the building and was planning to begin renovation soon.

We asked him if there was a possibility to get into the castle to take a few photos - and to our surprise, he said yes! Then he opened the gate, so we could park right in the courtyard. After we had gotten our gear out of the car, he unlocked the castle door and took us on a tour through the castle.

This guy was really nice. He was with us the entire time, told us about the history of the castle, told stories from the past and explained what was planned for the future. All in all, we were in there for about two and a half hours, and the caretaker managed to fill the entire time with a wealth of information while we took our photos. He seemed to really like us and the fact that we had a genuine interest in the place and its history. We could have stayed even longer, but we had a dinner engagement by the campfire for the evening - and one more spot to explore on the way...

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

Tour Report: Villa "Lakeside"

We had saved the most spectacular spot for last on our tour with our friend Toeppi in June of 2018. We had seen two really cool bunkers, a doctor's villa that was more a dump than anything else, and we'd desperately tried to find a way into an abandoned water works facility that was more than tightly locked. But this one was to be the grand finale...

Situated in a very wealthy area with lots of villas that belong to celebrities, we didn't expect this one to be easy.

We parked the car roadside a bit down between a couple of other cars so as not to rise any suspicion. First, we took a little stroll down the street to look like regular tourists while evaluating our options of getting onto the property. In the end, we decided to just jump the fence and quickly run towards the bushes. We waited for the right moment, and then we ran. Finding an open door into the house was easy once we were on the property. We were in - unsuspected and undetected!

As we walked through the empty rooms, we were amazed at the luxury that the former owners must have lived in. This place had it all - an indoor pool, a bowling alley, a boat house, a wine cellar...

We took our time looking through all the rooms, and we were surprised that a nice seafront property such as this one wouldn't find a new owner to take care of it and bring it back to its former glory.

After almost two hours, we finished the tour with the mandatory selfie shot and then called it a day.

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