Tour Report: The Farm of Seven Tractors

During our short tour to Denmark in October of 2018, we also visited an abandoned farm. I had gotten a tip regarding this place, and upon hearing that the barn was hiding some neat old vehicles, I got curious. So we decided to check it out.

It was a drive of only about 30 kilometers from the abandoned mink farm that had been our first exploration of the day. It was a warm and sunny Sunday, so we had a nice little drive across the picturesque Danish countryside until we arrived at the place. It was tough finding a spot to park without driving right up to the barn, but we did manage to find something between some bushes, so that our car was mostly hidden from suspicious eyes.

There was one farmhouse and a large barn. We first walked around the farmhouse trying to find an open door, an open window, a basement door - anything that would allow us to get inside. However, we didn't get lucky; the place farmhouse was tightly locked, and there was no way in.

The barn was entirely different. The door was open, and we could walk right in.

Upon entering, we spotted an old stable. There were four tractors, most of them Fergusons from the late 1950s (I think - but I'm not a tractor expert, so I might be wrong). Judging by the rust and dust they had collected, none of them had seen any farm action for at least ten or fifteen years, so in terms of rust and decay, this place was already a success.

As we went into the second part of the barn, we couldn't believe our eyes - there were three more tractors and even two old Volkswagen Beetles!

It's always great to find a Beetle, especially from the earlier years of construction, but in this case, what excited me more was the Zetor tractor that we found. Not that I know anything about these tractors except that they are manufactured in the Czech Republic - but when I was in Helsinki (Finland) during my Navy years, I visited a bar called "Zetor" that belonged to the Finnish band "Leningrad Cowboys". It was a legendary evening, and that's why I still have a good feeling whenever I see a "Zetor" tractor!

Tour Report: Mink Farm "Mercedes"

In late October 2018, I embarked on a short tour through Denmark together with my good friend Tonne from Lost Places in Schleswig-Holstein und Umland. It was our first visit to Denmark after a tour in February, so we were excited to see what we were going to discover.

The first spot we visited was an abandoned mink farm. Denmark is the largest producer of mink fur in the world and produces about one third of all internationally sold mink furs - the mink "population" in Denmark surpasses the number of Danish citizens by far. In this context, it is no surprise that there are also quite a few abandoned mink farms in Denmark that have been closed mostly due to bad hygienic conditions or illegal farming.

Since we didn't want to look suspicious to the neighbors (they might think that we are animal rights activists or journalists looking for a spectacular story of tortured animals), we parked on a public parking spot  rather far away and walked the rest of the way. Entering the premises was easy; it only involved climbing over a small fence, so we got in without being seen.

The farm was made up of eight or ten large houses for farming the animals and one larger house that we think was used for storing tools and refurbishing cages. It was depressing to see the conditions that the animals had to live in. There even was something that I'd call a "feeding wagon" that looked like it was used to pour food into the small "food chute" in front of the cages.

The best part about this place was the fact that it was abandoned and that nature has been reclaiming it for a few years now.

As we got out at the end of our exploration, we did have an encounter with a lady who seemed to have an interest in what we were doing on the premises. She didn't say if she was the owner or just a neighbor, but she insisted that the place was not abandoned and told us that we had to leave (which we were doing anyway). She did calm down a bit after we talked a couple more minutes and found out that her daughter was going to school pretty close to our hometown, so even though she probably won't be friends with us, in the end she was a bit nicer after all. 

To check out all the photos from this place, click the button below.

Tour Report: Asylum for the Insane

After exploring two Cold War bunkers on that beautiful day back in September 2018, we decided to finish the day off with an above-ground location - a pretty well-known spot that neither we nor our friend Toeppi had explored before. It also kind of fit nicely into our topic of the day (Cold War), since this abandoned asylum had been used as a military hospital for the high command of the Soviet armed forces and their relatives from 1945 until 1994.

We arrived at the spot sometime towards the late afternoon and parked our car by the road a couple of hundred meters from the location, since we knew that the area was regularly patrolled by a security service, and we didn't want to arise any suspicion. Going here had been a relatively spontaneous decision, so we were unprepared in terms of how to get in, so we had to search for an entry. As we walked along the fence, we noticed a small opening in the fence right near an open door into one of the buildings. No one was watching, so we hastily slipped through the fence and quickly walked into the building.

Of course, there wasn't much left to see from the various uses this place has had over the decades, but at least a few Soviet writings could be found that pointed to the Cold War era. There was a large number of buildings that had various uses - even a typical car repair workshop had been built by the Soviets. More than 25 years of abandonment had taken their toll on the once beautiful buildings. Vandals have stolen most of the metal appliances, light fixtures and electrical installations. Wind and rain have made the structures deteriorate, so more than a few buildings are so dangerously ramshackle that we didn't enter them or at least didn't climb on any of the higher floors.

At some point, we heard voices moving towards our location. Naturally, we thought that it was the security service, but it was just two people that were exploring just as we were - with the exception that they unpacked a drone to get some footage from above. As the drone started, the place was filled by the typical buzz that sounded like 1.000 hornets, and that was the point where we decided to call it a day. Not only was it getting late and we still had a bit of a way to drive, but also the noise the other guys were making with the drone might attract some people that you don't want to meet while on an exploration ;)

We didn't want to walk the long way back to the part of the fence were we had entered the area, so we just walked up to the main gate and climbed over it.

Toeppi dropped us off at our hotel, and that was the end of another memorable day of exploring the relics of the Cold War.

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