Tour Report: The Malt Factory

I had seen this huge abandoned malting plant up close a couple of times before when I passed it riding a train, and of course I had seen a lot of photos on the internet, but I'd never had the chance to explore it myself - until that day back in August of 2017.
My wife and I had walked past it a couple of days earlier to check for a way in, but the place was not so abandoned after all. On one side, there is an active railway area (the one I rode past on), and parts of the factory premises appeared to be in use as well. We could've easily entered the place, but we weren't sure how far the active parts reached and how quickly we could be spotted once we were on the premises - after all, there were apartment buildings with balconies across the street...
We gave up. This looked too risky.
We walked along the surrounding wall one more time, when a possibility arose! We managed to get permission for a semi-illegal entry.
I'm not going to go into the details, but it involved a phone call that we had to promise never took place...

Two days later, after we had dropped off my mother-in-law at the train station, my wife and I drove back to the malt factory and took the easy way in.
Once on the premises, however, it was hard to find access to the main part of the factory. There were a few open doors to some of the smaller parts, but the corridors to the central production facilities were walled shut.
It took us some time to find an opening, but the floor seemed very unstable. Remembering the story we'd heard about a photographer who broke through a floor in this place a few months earlier and had to be freed by the fire department wasn't really beneficial for our decision-making process at that moment, either.
In the end, I squeezed through the hole in the wall and my wife stayed behind. In the end, the floor was safe, but you never know - and it is good that at least one of us has some common sense ;)
The reward for my recklessness were a couple of nice shots of some remaining machinery and the "real" production halls.
After I had safely returned to my wife, we went back the way we had taken to get in, got back to the car and drove back to the hotel.
A successful day of exploring ended with a nice dinner at the Restaurant "Hüftgold", where we'd had dinner once before during our stay. This was a nice way to finish our trip to this area of Germany before we headed to the Harz mountains the following day.


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Tour Report: The Leather Factory

Since our exploration of the abandoned meat factory was cut a little short, there was still some time left to visit another spot before we had to drop off my mother-in-law at the train station for her ride home.

We decided for an abandoned leather factory in a small town bordering a large city. The drive wasn't too far, and so there still would be enough time to drive to the train station after we'd finished our exploration.

We drove to the address that I had found out for this location, and we could see the old leather factory from pretty far away. The surrounding area looked a little different from what I had seen on Google Earth during planning - a supermarket had been built where I suspected the access to be... We were lucky, though - it was Sunday, and there was hardly any cars parking on the supermarket parking lot, so we had a nice place to park ourselves. A truck was parked next to the fence separating the supermarket from the industrial ruin. The hole was right next to the truck, whose driver was either sleeping or not even in the truck, but we still tried to be as quiet as possible while sneaking past the truck's door and slipped through the hole in the fence.

We hurried across the open field towards the factory building and found an open door right away. We were in and started our explore. Lots of cars and pedestrians were passing the factory during the time we were in there, completely unaware of our presence. We explored the place bottom to top. Considering the region in which it stands, the building is still in relatively good shape. There are plenty of graffiti, and about every piece of metal has been stolen, but the vast rooms, the arched windows and the sunlight gave the old ruin a nice atmosphere to take photos.

About two hours after our arrival, we had finished checking out all rooms of the abandoned leather factory, and we went back to the car.

We drove to the train station, dropped off my mother-in-law, and after that, my wife and I were off to the next location, so stay tuned for the next tour report...

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Tour Report: Meat Factory D.

We got so caught on this one! But the security service could have saved themselves the hassle if they had paid attention before we entered.
But let's start at the beginning. The day before, we had a really great tour together with my mother-in-law, visiting an abandoned manor house from the 17th century and the beautiful "Devil's Bridge".
The next day, we still had some time left before dropping off my mother-in-law at the train station, and we decided to spend the time wisely - exploring more abandoned places!
The first spot early in the morning was a huge abandoned  meat factory built in the late 1920s. As we drove up to the building, we were impressed by the size and the beautiful architectural style.
We found a parking place near the factory and walked around a bit to do a preliminary check for possible access routes.
As we looked over a wall to the main door, we saw two people leaving the building. One of them was carrying a camera and a backpack. We tried to alert them to our presence using a sort of "loud whisper" to see if they had information regarding the access on the premises. Apparently, they didn't hear us, because they disappeared and left the premises somewhere where we couldn't see.
So we had to find the access for ourselves. Which we did. We had to squeeze between a wall and a fence and get through a thicket of thorny bushes. My mother-in-law declined and wanted to wait in the car, so my wife and I went in without her.
We managed to get through the plants, and to our surprise, the door to the building was open. We entered and immediately started taking photos.
After about twenty minutes, one of the two guys that we saw leaving the building earlier came out of one of the stairwells and said "Gotcha!".
He had us. Turns out that he worked for the security company tasked with watching the building - and the "two guys" leaving the building earlier was just him escorting his first catch of the day off the premises...
Apparently, we had tripped one of many motion detectors inside the building...
Anyway - the upside was that aside from having to leave, no consequences ensued - and we got to leave the place through the "normal" gate and didn't have to crawl through the bushes again!
We even told the guy that if he had paid attention to us whispering over the wall, he could have saved himself and us the trouble. He actually had thought that he was the one who tripped the motion sensor as he left with the guy before us and only came by when we tripped the next one...


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