Aqua Park B.

This aqua park was a widely known recreation area in the eastern part of Germany.
It was opened in 1985, when Germany was still separated.
At the time, the construction cost almost 45 million Deutsche Mark, of which the state put in nine million as a non-interest-bearing loan. During the soccer season 1986/87, the aqua park became the shirt sponsor of a traditional German soccer club.
In the early years, the aqua park had about 600.000 visitors every year, but the number of visitors declined and fell to about 300.000 in the year 2001.
The manager of the park declared that it was essentially the "public character" of the park that had contibuted to its downfall.
There were massive problems with youth gangs that were getting very territorial about the pools. Three security guards were hired, but they couldn't do anything about it.
The security problems and the increasing structural decay scared off a lot of the potential visitors, especially families.
At the end of 2002, the aqua park was closed by the local health authority due to an infestation with rats, bird droppings and for the hygienic control of epidemics.

More photos in Part 2...and to view the full gallery, please visit my website.

Broadcasting Center G.

It was originally built as one in a long line of impressive boat houses along a river near Berlin by a famous architect around 1930. At that point, watersport in the area was already looking back at a history spanning about 130 years. The building was taken over by a large bank in 1934 and was at the time the largest rowing ang recreation center in Germany. But of course its destiny changed with the war.
Everything did. The German Wehrmacht took over in 1940 to use it as a back-up military hospital. Toward the end of the war, it was damaged and finally taken over by the Soviet administration.
From then on, the boating days were over - the radio was coming.
Boat sheds were converted to classrooms, barracks emerged and the large two story-high ballroom was converted into recording studios.
In 1945, the Soviets set up the "Berliner Rundfunk" and the former boat house was turned into a broadcasting center and an editorial team started the broadcast in September of 1946.

But radio programs were recorded there not only for Berlin - also for cities such as Dresden or Leipzig or Weimar.
East Germany set up its broadcasting school here in 1951.
But it also  remained important for political reasons. Berliner Rundfunk operated from here for a few months in 1952, before the large broadcasting center at Nalepastraße was constructed. The new broadcasting center later became the headquarters for the radio of the GDR. Most journalists had moved from this place to Nalepastraße by 1956.
In 1956-57 the “Freiheitssender 904” (Radio Freedom 904) program was broadcast from the old boat house in response to the banning of the West German Communist Party (KPD). It was supposed to be the “voice of opposition” to West German policies.
But mainly, aspiring broadcasters were educated here. They learned the pitfalls of radio technology and training was provided right up to the end of 1991.
TV people had also gotten their hands on the old boat house - a former broadcasting hall upstairs served as a rehearsal room for the Deutsches Fernsehballett (German Television Ballet), also up to the end of 1991.
Bankruptcies of various owners followed, and in 2012, a group of artists moved in an attempt to "gentrify" the quarter, but soon there were complyints from the neighbors and eventually, the artists had to move out again

Distillery H. [Revisit] (Part 3)

Alright, here are the last few photos I took during my second visit to the abandoned distillery/liqueur factory.
I still think this is one of the coolest loations I have ever had the pleasure to visit, and I hope I'll get another chance to go there and see what becomes of it.

To check out the full gallery, please visit my website.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3