Tour Report: Command Post W43

Over the past couple of years, my wife and I have established kind of a tradition to take a week-long vacation at the end of November. Due to the Christmas season, it's the last opportunity in the year for her to take a couple of days off.

In November of 2017, we were going to take a trip to visit our friend Petra. We had planned to stay at her house for four nights, spend the evenings cooking and drinking together while my wife and I were going to go exploring during the day.

The first day of our tour was a Wednesday. Since it was the travel day, and we wanted to arrive in daylight, we had only planned to explore two locations along the route. Both of them were command posts built by the former East German People's Army (NVA).

We left home at around ten in the morning and drove about two hours before we got anywhere near the first location. Judging by the coordinates, it should have been easy to reach the place - there were, however, some one-way streets that the GPS didn't know and in addition to that, there was some construction being done on other roads, so it took us about ten kilometers to get to a spot only a few hundred meters away...

As we arrived, everything looked good at first, but when we got closer, we saw that we weren't going to have a chance at entering.

The area had been split in two parts - one was being used as a paintball range, and the other part was guarded by dogs. I called the owner of the paintball range, but he didn't want us to enter his premises, and he also said that entering the dog kennel next door wouldn't be wise...

So we left this place somewhat disappointed. At least we knew that e didn't have to return to try again.
And there still was the second location we had on our list.
That one was going to get tricky. We only had vague coordinates, and the bunker itself was buried underground in a forest area. As we were on the way, it started raining. And it didn't look like it was going to stop.
Based on the coordinates of the bunker, I had checked for a place to park that was somewhere near what I thought was probably the former access road for the command post. As we arrived, we found the parking spot right away - right opposite an old barrier that blocked the old path.
The rain hadn't stopped, so next to our gear, we took rain capes and umbrellas with us to at least try to stay dry.
Since we didn't have a clue where exactly the bunker was, we tried to proceed systematically and first tried the visible paths that we could find. They all led nowhere, and we had to take some detours, because it had been raining the days before which had turned parts of the forest into a muddy mess.
While we were still searching, the rain got worse, and we were about to give up. I just wanted to try the last path that we hadn't checked yet.
After a few hundred meters, we discovered a first small bunker which was either used as guard post or to accommodate part of the personnel.

We regained hope - in spite of the ever-increasing rain...
As we proceeded, a shape began to emerge between the trees. We had found the main bunker! Now we only had to find a way in.
The whole thing had apparently been sealed at some point in the past, but copper thieves had removed the earth covering the entrance, so we were in!!

My wife was a bit skeptical regarding the entry, but the fact that she'd have to be standing alone in the rain until I'd finished the explore convinced her after all, and we entered.
At that moment, I realized that I had forgotten my tripod. I was carrying the umbrella, so there was that familiar feeling in my hand, which is why I hadn't noticed until the moment of truth, so to speak...
Well, no HDR photos, but I didn't care. We had found the bunker after about one and a half hours of searching the forest in the pouring rain - I was happy as a clam.


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

Here's a short video we made of our explore of this interesting relic from the cold war:

And here are some of the photos I took. Remember, it was completely dark so we had to work with flashlights :)

Tour Report: Rusty McBoatface

I had gotten a tip regarding the remains of an old brick port somewhere in the Northeastern part of Germany. A friend of mine showed me photos of an old rusty barge withering away between the trees, and I was convinced that I had to go check it out.
When we were on our tour with Nordgriller urbex back in October of 2017, we put the old barge on the list. It was pretty close to the railway bridge, so we planned it as our final spot for the day - and hoped for a sunny afternoon...
We weren't disappointed. I had gotten the coordinates for the barge as well as coordinates for a parking spot nearby. Nearby in  this case meant that we still had to walk for what felt like about forty-five minutes through the forest until we got to the barge.
The way was okay, though. It was a path that seemed to be used fairly often by dog walkers and the people living in the area. It led along a small channel that had been the connection from the brick port to the next larger river, so it already was part of our "historical" route towards the old ship.
After all - a lot of the bricks that were produced here and transported along this route were used to build the beautiful "Speicherstadt" (warehouse district) of Hamburg.
On the path along the channel, we also crossed the remains of an old bridge. The bridge itself was gone, but we still could see the abutments. Judging by the vegetation following the bridges remains, it used to be a railway bridge that was used to transport bricks and/or materials from and to the brickyard.
After a while, we reached the remains of the brick port. The brickyard itself had been torn down long before our visit and turned into a solar plant, so next to the old barge, only a few walls of the brick port remain and pay witness to the once busy industrial facility.
As we arrived, the sun began to set, and the scenery was filled with a beautiful light.
We took our time and walked around to get the barge from every possible angle before starting our walk back through the forest.
This really was a worthwhile location, and we really enjoyed this short trip!


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

Tour Report: Railway Bridge D.

This one is more a monument than an abandoned place, but we were in the area and thought it might be a good place to visit and take some photos.
The drive from the abandoned garrison that we had visited first took about 45 minutes, during which the sky above us became completely clear of clouds. As we arrived at the old railway bridge, that had been a symbol for the German separation, we found a place to park right away. There is a free public parking lot pretty close to the bridge itself.
The bridge used to be more than 1.000 meters long before half of it was destroyed during World War II, so it was a very impressive structure, even as we were still relatively far away.
We took our photos, and I got a bit annoyed that there were no clouds in the sky. A clear blue sky without any clouds looks boring in most photos - but at least it wasn't raining ;)
The fortified bridgehouse was surrounded by scaffolding after Dutch investors bought the bridge and are in the process of securing and renovating it.
Of course, we slipped through the construction fence to get a closer look. There was a slippery, muddy slope that we had to climb in order to get up to the bridgehouse, but we managed and got to enjoy the view along the railway bridge to the other (East German) side of the River Elbe.
Towards the end of our exploration, we walked across the grasslands and admired the massive bridge piers that keep the steel construction on top in place.

The old bridge is definitely worth a visit, and since it is a monument, I can share the location:

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