Chateau K.

This one was the last spot on our summer tour last year, and it was a really nice explore as well. Originally more of an alternative, it turned out to be a little gem for my wife and me.
After we had finished exploring the mill and the mill owner's villa, we drove a little while to a small old town.
I had found some information on a mansion there that was built around the turn of the 20th century as an "optical upgrade" from a large farm hous or estate house, something which I understand was a very fashionable thing to do at the time.
The really "funny" part about the history of this "castle" however came up after the tour, when I found out that a former "owner" actually had worked for me as a call center agent!! And he was selling fake nobility titles!!!
Anyway, we drove up to the castle and found a public parking spot conveniently close to the park surrounding the building. The location was at the end of a street with not many neighbors and it was pretts overgrown, so we started our first walk around and found an open window at the back right away, and we climbed inside.
Inside we found that the masnion was mostly empty, but there was hardly any vandalism as well. The afternoon sun made for a spectacular light in the large hall, which became one of my favorute shots from the entire tour.


To find out more about the history of this castle - and the whole story behind the criminal mastermind who owned it - and to check out all the photos from this great spot, click the button below.

The Factory Owner's Villa

As I've said in the last post, we not only met "the guy with the dog" on the premises of the old mill works, but also two guys that were working as structural engineers who were evaluating the static integrity of the factory owner's villa.
We had a little chat with one of them in which he warned us about some rooms in the villa and told us a story about some photographers that broke through a floor like two weeks earlier.

Of course, we did check out the villa after the guys had left.
There wasn't much to see at all, but as always, some photos came out pretty okay ;)

The russian letters on the wall are remains from a movie shoot for German television a couple of years back.

To find out more about the history of this villa and to check out all the photos from this great spot, click the button below.

Mill Works H.

The next day, my wife and I drove north from our hotel to another city that offered some nice spots.
The weather was great, but we got into traffic trouble again, because this city was also conducting massive construction to improve the traffic situation. Which led to a traffic situation.
Anywhere we took a turn towards or destination, we found ourselves stopped by another construction site.
After what felt like forever, we found a parking place, but we had to walk a while before reaching the spot.
For our first location, we had chosen an old mill whose buildings date back in part as far as 1720.
The area is pretty large, and there were two fences to be conquered.
The first was a normal construction fence. We found a way past a transformer box and got through without any trouble. Then we went along the second fence until we found a hole and slipped through. We started taking photos from the outside of the buildings right away. After about a half hour, a man with a large dog came from the forest in the far corner of the property. He walked past us but kept his distance, so we kept taking photos. It looked as if he went to the main gate and checked the fence to see if we had broken anything - which we hadn't.
On his way back, he stopped and looked at us, but dind't make any attempts to chase us off the property or even talk to us. So I decided to act and took a few steps towards him (but was still aome meters away from him) and said that we were tourists from the North and couldn't walk past this beautiful ruin without....I was interrupted by the dog starting to bark furiously. The man told the dog to shut up and only said "Dont't worry, he only bites the ones that are guilty...". Then he left and went back into the forest...

We decided to keep taking photos in spite of the somewhat spooky encounter. So we explored the area, took photos inside the old mill building, and when we went on towards the next building, we saw two men with a car that were loading equipment which they were getting out of the factory owner's villa. We went past them and gave them a friendly "Hello!" to which they replied equally friendly. We were mostly done taking our photos, only the villa remained, and we didn't want to go in while there were still these guys inside. So we decided to plan the next location after the mill. At some point, one of the guys came over and asked us if we were waiting for someone. I explained that we were looking where to go next. He asked if we had planned to check out the villa to which I replied that we in fact had. He warned us about some of the floors and stairs but didn't make an attempt to stop us. We kept talking for a while and i turned out that he and his colleague were structural engineers who were checking the stability of the building for a potential buyer.
Before they left, the guy asked us if we had seen the man with the dog, and we told him about our encounter.
He only said "Oh. You were lucky.".

To find out more about the history of this industrial ruin and to check out all the photos from this great spot, click the button below.