Tour Report: The Farm of Seven Tractors

As the second spot on our short tour together with our good friend Urbex Inn we chose to revisit another location - the abandoned "Farm of Seven Tractors".

I had been there twice before, but a good location can't be visited often enough, and after all, the last visit had been nine months earlier.

Just like last time, we parked the cars at the edge of the nearest field and crept along a hedge until we got to the house.

First we went into the familiar barn with the many tractors. Nothing had changed in the last few months, and all the farm vehicles were still there. However, someone had closed the large gate of the second barn, which suggested that in and again someone looks after the situation.

But maybe it was just another photographer who hoped for better lighting conditions by closing the door. The opposite was the case with us, so that we had to open the gate for reasonable pictures (of course, we closed it again afterwards).

Due to the fact that not much had changed, we spent only a relatively short time on site, and after we - once again - unsuccessfully tried to find an entrance to the farmhouse, we went on our way again. At this point, Urbex Inn unfortunately had to head home, but we still had some time to check out one last location, so we hit the road again.

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

Tour Report: Command Post W13

After we finished our exploration of the communications bunker, we moved on to the next bunker. For this we only had to drive a short distance down the road and then a bit through the forest - actually only a short hop, but with an Audi TT on the uncleared forest roads it was already an adventurous drive.

We parked the car on a forest path next to a former guard post and made our way through the thicket. Soon we could make out some concrete parts as well as the supply and exhaust pipes.

It was quite clear - below us was the former joint command post of an air defense missile regiment and a radio engineering battalion.

The main entrance had obviously been bricked up a long time ago, but we found an open emergency exit that we could use as an entrance.

It felt like a very long way down, even if it was only a few meters in the end - but such a first entrance is quite exciting, and can distort the perception a bit :)

Through the emergency exit we first entered the room with ventilation and air conditioning. From there, we went down the hall to the radio distribution room and on to the storage room. After a short look into the airlock of the main entrance we explored the annex consisting of three FB-3 tube bunkers. After that, we headed back out into the sun - because we had two more locations to explore that day....

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

Tour Report: Communications Bunker "Little G"

This place was so secret that even in the paranoid bureaucacy of East Germany, there was no codename for this bunker - and it was forbidden to mention the name or the location in any case.

It was this place that my friend Lost Places in Schleswig-Holstein und Umland and I had chosen as the first of four locations on a day trip through the Northeastern part of Germany in July 2019.

I was picked up early in the morning, and about 2 hours and 200 kilometers later we were driving along a narrow road that would lead us to the bunker. When we reached a clearing where we thought the bunker was, we first saw...nothing. A radio mast next to the area showed that we were on the right track, but a bunker was nowhere to be seen. In the field, however, we could clearly see a heavily overgrown hill - the bunker hill.

So we got our equipment and set out to explore the site. There were no obvious paths, and it was all very overgrown, so we had to make our way cross-country through the bushes. Then, on top of the hill, we discovered a small antenna and some fan outlets, which showed us that we had indeed found the right place. When we then discovered the main entrance, disappointment was already spreading, because it was locked bomb-proof.

However, we were not discouraged by this, but looked for the emergency exits of the bunker. And we found one. It looked a bit like a too small toilet house - but with a very wide drain ;)
We climbed down the ladder and then had to squeeze through a narrow round hatch to get into the rooms of the bunker.

The bunker itself was quite big - a floor space of 500 square meters and about 30 rooms of different sizes wanted to be explored. The typical picture presented itself: Almost all electrical equipment was removed in the course of abandoning the bunker, and the rest was snatched up by cable thieves.

Still, it was a very interesting walk-through, because none of us had explored a bunker of this type before - and both graffiti "artists" and party-crazed teenagers had left the bunker alone until then.
So we had a very successful and exciting location to start our tour - it's always good to start the day with a sense of achievement!

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

Tour Report: Soviet Garrison H. [Revisit]

The second location that we explored during our spontaneous tour in May of 2019 was an abandoned Soviet Garrison. I had visited the place, which had been built as part of an airfield by the Nazis in 1935/36, twice before in 2014 and 2015. For me, it is always interesting to see what happens to an abandoned building in long periods between visits. Is it still accessible at all? Has demolition or renovation started? If not, what is the condition, and how did the decay develop over the years? These are always the questions that I ask myself before a revisit.

In this case, not much had changed in the four years since my second visit.

The more or less "official" parking spot was still there, and there still were no real fences around the building. However, a lot of the windows and doors on the lower floor had been boarded up, so we had to look a little longer until we found an opening.

We climbed through a window and started walking the hallways of the curved, 500 meter long building.

The afternoon sun and the green trees in front of the windows projected beautiful patterns of light, shadow and color into the rooms. The decay was more intense than before - but then, after almost thirty years of deterioration, you can't really tell...

Towards the end our walkthrough, I decided to check out the basement one more time - and it was a good thing, too, because I did find a few Soviet documents as well as some propaganda posters. This was yet another proof that you really have to check everywhere if you want to find all the interesting stuff :)

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.

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