Tour Report: Hotel "Rosary"

This abandoned hotel was a totally accidental find and became the second spot on my tour with Pixelcracker in October of 2017. We had just left the first location and were walking back towards the car. I was about to light a cigarette, when we spotted a building that did look a bit abandoned. Don't ask me what made me look, but after some years of exploring, you don't even have to be explicitly looking for something, but you find it anyway ;)
It was another hotel. The sign out front looked dirty, the lawn hadn't been cut in some time, and the facade had seen better days. But all the windows were intact, there was no obvious way in. We were in a bit of a hurry because we still had a bit to drive to our destination and we wanted to get some groceries before driving up to the mountain.
But we took the time to check a little more, and we found an open window.
Once inside, we were surprised. The overall condition of the hotel was really good. There was almost no visible decay or vandalism. It was obvious that some "interior decorators" had been there before us and possibly some stuff had already been stolen, but it did look pretty good.
And that was also my problem. I really don't like spots in pristine condition. I gotta have decay, mold, rust, flakes, stains - and this place didn't have that.
Of course, I did take some photos, it was an accidental find and there was no vandalism - these things made this a successful explore, but the spot itself wasn't really spectacular.
At the time, we decided not to explore the second building adjacent to the first one because the hour was getting late, but later I saw that there was a pretty neat pool area that we'd missed...
Well, next time :)


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

Tour Report: Hillside Hotel

The abandoned malt factory had been the final spot on the main part of our summer vacation in 2017. For the way home, we had planned to spend one more night at our friend Jens' place and take some night shots at the abandoned sanatorium in his backyard.
So we spent one more night at the hotel in Dresden before packing our stuff the next morning. Next to a few breaks to smoke a cigarette, we made exactly two stops.
The first one was to pick up a few cases case of really nice Schnapps made from bread that we had discovered in Leipzig two years earlier. It's called "Brotschnaps" and if you're interested, you can check it out here.
The second stop was an abandoned hotel in a small toon in the mountains that we had our eye on as a nice little explore on the way.
As we arrived, we parked the car a few hundred meters down the street and walked the rest of the way. There were no fences or signs of any kind, nobody was around, so we quickly walked onto the premises and found cover behind some bushes before starting to look for a way in.
The abandoned hotel consists of four main parts: The old main building that has a wooden structure, the newly-built annex constructed of stone, and the indoor pool whose roof had already collapsed, make up the main hotel. A little off to the side is a small house which was probably used as accommodation for the hotel's employees.
We started checking the main building and quickly found a way in. The first couple of rooms that we found looked promising, but a fire had scorched part of the building - including the stairs to the first floor. We decided not to take the risk at that point and went on to explore the annex. It was completely empty and looked like it was supposed to be refurbished, but work had stopped after stripping the rooms. The only thing to see there was some nice light and a bit of green in the rooms.
Eventually, we left the main building and turned our attention towards the small house a little up the hill. Gaining entry wasn't as easy as we had hoped, but with a little acrobatics, we made it safely in.
The place was a real highlight, most of the furniture was still there and seemed to be relatively untouched.
All in all, a nice little "en-route-exploration". I was a little annoyed that we chickened out and didn't walk up the scorched stairs, but I convinced myself that it was the right thing to do.
This conviction only held for about six weeks, when I returned for a revisit. But that's another story.


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

Tour Report: Hotel "Atlantis"

This abandoned grand hotel was the grand finale, so to speak, for our tour of three hotels in one day during our summer vacation back in August of 2017.

It was the most promising location for the day, but it was also the farthest to drive to. In light of the potential for truly beautiful decay, however, this was definitely going to be worth it!

As most of the times, we didn't really have a plan what we could expect in terms of security or access possibilities; judging from the amount of photos from this location that you can find on the internet however, we didn't count on too much "resistance".

Finding a spot to park was easy - there is a supermarket near the place that nicely concealed our true intentions for mischief.

We gathered our gear and walked the rest of the way up to the old hotel that waited for us a little hidden behind some trees. There were a lot of tourists walking on the paths along the hotel, but since there was no apparent fence or signs of any kind, we just walked up to the hotel and started looking around. The trees helped because we couldn't be seen from the street while we conducted our search for a way in.
To cut a long story short: We had walked around a long time and were almost ready to cancel the explore when we finally found a way in.

It led through some basements directly into the pool area. We were greeted by warm, humid air, and the pleasant smell of mold filled the room...

From the pool, we made our way through the newer part of the building, which was not as nice in terms of decay, but did still offer some good shots, and from there into the old part of the hotel.

The old part has a lot of wood in its partly half-timbered construction, so during the many years of abandonment, the decay has literally painted the walls and floors in beautiful colors and textures.

We took our time exploring all floors of the building, and the higher we climbed, the more decay we discovered - but more decay means also more danger, so we had to be really careful in some of the higher parts of the place.

Only when the sun was slowly beginning to set, we called it a day, packed our stuff and left the hotel. On the way off the property, a middle-aged couple walked up to us and asked us if we knew anything about the place. We had a nice short talk with them before we went back to the care and drove "home" (i.e. our hotel).

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

Tour Report: Hotel of Many Doors

The second abandoned hotel that we visited on the fourth day of our summer vacation back in August of 2017 was more or less an accidental find. I didn't know about the location, but while planning the route, I scrolled through the region in Google Earth and stumbled upon this pretty large building. A little research and I knew that it was an abandoned hotel. So we had another spot on our map for the tour.
It took us about 45 minutes to drive from the first spot to this one, and when we arrived, we found three buildings that made up the hotel. The area wasn't really secured; only a rudimentary fence gave the impression that at some point in the past, someone cared what happened to the place. So we just walked up and started looking around.
Two buildings looked really nice from the outside but were so completely trashed on the inside that we didn't really take any photos. In addition, the condition of the floors wasn't really encouraging... The larger building was empty. Almost no interior was left - but there also wasn't any trash and there were hardly any graffiti.
Although some people keep telling me that empty locations like this are boring and offer no real photo opportunities, I really did like this place. Nice decay, beautiful light, doors, windows, stairs - I say, whoever thinks that locations like this are boring, hasn't understood what "urbex" means!

Anyway, we had a good time exploring the place and took our time for a complete walkthrough before we headed back to the car and drove off to the next hotel.


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

Tour Report: Hotel "Snowy Mountain Station"

After exploring the old iron works and leaving the Harz mountains, it was a bit of a ride until we got to Dresden. We had chosen Dresden as our "base of operations", so to speak, for the next couple of days of our vacation. We checked in to our hotel and still had some time to go shopping for some drinks and snacks for later.
It was around 7pm when we got hungry and decided to check for a restaurant - and we did find a nice little place really close by the hotel. The name was promising: "Hüftgold", which literally means "hip gold", roughly to be translated as "love handles" :)
In case you ever make it to Dresden, go check it out: Hüftgold

The next morning, we got up early because we had a long day and many miles of road ahead of us. We bought breakfast at the gas station near the hotel and were quickly on the way to our first target location which was a bit more than one hunderd kilometers away.
The abandoned hotel was originally the railway station of a small town in the mountains of Eastern Germany. The train operations were stopped in the 1950s, and all tracks have been dismantled, so only a few architectural features give testament to the former use.

We had some trouble finding a spot to park, but eventually found one that was not too far away and wouldn't be too obvious for passing cars or pedestrians. It was only early in the morning, but it was a really sunny day and temperatures were already high. There was only a rundimentary fence around the premises, so the only difficulty was getting to the building through the dry and thorny flora surrounding it. Eventually we got there and found an easy way in on the backside of the building. Situated pretty close to a residential area, it was clear that there would be a lot of vandalism and graffiti, and it was exactly as expected. The place was pretty much trashed, but we did manage to get some nice shots out of it, so it was a nice spot to start out the day.

After about an hour and a half, we climbed back out and got back to the car. The next spot was about forty kilometers away - but driving in the mountains can be tricky, so we calculated about 45 minutes...stay tuned for hotel number two!


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

Smelting Works H.

Like every day during our summer vacations, we started our fourth day of exploring with a hearty breakfast at the hostel where we stayed.
During berakfast, we finialized the plan we had made during dinner the night before.
The plan for the day was to explore three locations in the southeastern foothills of the Harz mountains. So after breakfast, we loaded our gear into the car and were on our way.
The first spot we were going to check out was an old industrial area - the Smelting Works.
After many years of making an impact on the regional metalworking industry, it is now being used as an area for paintball - at least that's what the sign on the fence said.
There was no one there and it didn't look like the area was being used, so we parked our car out of sight and went along the fence until we found a hole.
The morning sun made for really nice light in the old factory halls and the architecture in some of the buildings reminded me of religious buildings. It was a really nice spot to start the day. After about two and a half hours we went back to the car to drive to the next spot.


To find out more about the history of this li'l ol' place and to check out all the photos from this spot, click the button below.