Tour Report: Bunker of the Luftwaffe

On the way home from our short vacation in Eastern Germany back in November of 2017, my wife and I decided to make a quick stop to check out one more bunker.
The area is riddled with abandoned facilities from World War II as well as from the time of the Soviet occupation, and there was just enough time for one of those, so we chose the one where we expected the least trouble in terms of getting in.
It's not entirely clear what this bunker was, but it's pretty safe to assume that it was used for maintenance by the "Erprobungsstelle der Luftwaffe" (Luftwaffe Test Area).
We parked by the side of the road and walked don a path that led us into the forest. After a while, we arrived at a gate, There was a sign saying something about hunting season, but we walked past the gate through a hole in the fence and after a few meters, we could see the ruin of the bunker.
Right next to it, the Soviets had built a shelter which had been used as a communications hub for the airfield. Now it looked like it was only used by local farmers.
The ruin of the old bunker was more than impressive. The dimensions of the construction were huge - and since there were a lot of holes in it, you could really well see how massive the walls were.
The combination of the demolished construction from the 1940s, the graffiti of the Soviet soldiers on the walls and nature having reclaimed a lot of the area since the Soviets had left, gave kind of a spooky atmosphere to the place, especially with the bleak light of November...
We took our time and climbed around in the ruins...until...
A deer roared...then we hear a shot!
That sounded pretty close!
We couldn't tell, but we decided that this wasn't a place to stay any longer, and since we were almost done anyway, we left through the gate and got back to the car to drive home.


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

Tour Report: Brass Factory E.

It was raining a lot, but that wasn't going to spoil our day! After we had gotten out of the bunker below a factory, it took some time for us to get to the car, because the rain had really gotten heavy, and we had to find shelter under a bridge on the factory premises...
The next spot that we had planned for the day was an old factory not too far away, so we took only one of the two cars to get there, and found a parking spot right across the street.
The factory was secured rather well at the time, and we looked around for a while before deciding to take the only option we'd seen - go through a hole in the fence, sneak along the river more or less pressed to the factory wall before climbing in.
Every stone, every piece of wood was slippery, and of course the ground had become muddy...it took a little while, but we made it.
The factory was in various stags of decay - some parts were recognizably damaged by fire, some were still in pretty good shape. The place was pretty big, so we spent quite a while there - also, because the rain kept us inside the buildings from time to time ;)

It was a really nice explore together with our friend Töppi - check out his page here!


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

Tour Report: Factory Bunker E.

It was a rainy day in November almost two years ago. We met up with a friend of ours (Link) to do some exploring... In a city about halfway from Berlin to the Baltic, we had some potentially nice spots on the map.

We met near the first location, parked our car, transferred the gear and drove the rest of the way using just one car. This first location was a huge abandoned underground WWII shelter. It had been built below a large factory that during the war produced transport equipment and anti-tank weapons. Parts of the old factory premises are being used by various companies now, so we had to be careful not to be too obvious regarding our endeavor.

We had to walk a while, and the rain didn't really get better. After a while, we reached a small patch of forest. We walked along a brick wall until we arrived at a steel door. Behind this door - stairs.

The metal stairs were wet from the rain, and we had to walk down about three floors until we reached the bunker.

The size of it was amazing. The ceilings were at least four meters high and the dimension of some of the rooms suggests that this wasn't merely an air raid shelter - maybe it served as storage or even as an underground production facility for the factory.

The signs on the walls are from the later use as a central shelter for civil defense of the factory during the cold war.

We were happy to have gotten out of the rain and spent a considerable amount of time checking out the bunker. It is, however, safe to assume that there are some more underground facilities directly beneath or at least near the factory. But we had planned another location, and the increasing rain forbade further extensive exploration of the area. So this will have to wait for the next time we're near the place...

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