Tour Report: Villa "Roadside"

Since late 2013, I had tried to find a way into this abandoned villa at least once or twice a year - yet everytime I was there, there was no access, and we had to go home or drive on to the next location. There had never been any photos on any platform that I know of - it seemed like this house was never going to let us in.

I'd made the same experience with another location closer to home. That one as well was inaccessible for years - until a certain group of so-called "urbexers", that gained (a little) fame by promoting unspectacular locations with (mostly more than exaggerated) spectacular stories, had suddenly "found" a way in.

Normally, I wouldn't find this suspicious, but that one was only one in a small series of locations that had been known to be inaccessible for years and - possibly by pure chance or fate - everyone of those houses had a broken window or door just as soon as these guys went to "check it out".

The abandoned villa was no different, and I do find it suspicious if people check the place out for five years - and then the "lucky guys" show up and oops! there is a broken window....

It's an ambivalent thing - on the one hand "real" urbexers are depending on vandals, copper thieves, squatters etc. to generate an access - but on the other hand, a real urbexer would never use force to enter a building.

In this case, I do think that the guys I'm talking about are using force to get into the buildings in order to be able to keep up a regular flow of "spectacular" videos on Youtube. In fact, they were sued for illegally entering an "abandoned" airport - only it wasn't really abandoned... After that, they posted various videos explaining themselves and saying (almost) nothing they did was illegal etc. etc.

I am sorry; this post was not supposed to be about the idiots that are spawning around the hobby of urban exploration, but I had to get this off my chest.

We visited this location together with our friend Pixelcracker in March of 2018. We had already explored an abandoned hotel that had formerly been a garrison of the East German border troops and since I had seen that the aforementioned "guys" had been to the villa by the road, I thought, why not check it out.

And I was right - there was a broken window at almost the exact same spot on the back of the building that I had found in the other villa which had no access for at least five years - what a surprise! But we were in. And I was happy that after five years, I finally got the chance to check the place out, even though there was sort of a bad aftertaste...

Since it hadn't been accessible for long, the vandalism and decoration hadn't really started yet. But we got a first-hand look and feel what happens when a location is "open". Towards the end of our explore, two guys came togehter with a "model", behaved like they owned the place and as we left, went upstairs and began rearranging the furniture. 

Over the more than two years since our visit, I have seen more photos from this location pop up over the internet, but they mostly looked like threre hadn't been too much vandalism yet (although a few things have apparently been stolen), and I truly hope that it's going to stay that way and that someone is going to rescue the place!

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

Tour Report: Hotel "Borderline"

Late in March of 2018, we undertook a short tour to Eastern Germany together with our friend Pixelcracker. It was a very spontaneous excursion, so there wasn't a lot of time for extensive planning, and we just took the locations that came our way, so to speak.

The first location that we visited was an abandoned hotel. The building used to be a garrison of the East German border troops (Grenztruppen), and it could easily be identified as such - most of these garrisons look identical.

The hotel was in one of four buildings that are left of the garrison; the others have been turned into apartments and storage.

We parked a few hundred meters away and took a little stroll down the road to the hotel. A few truck drivers were using the area to park their trucks for the weekend, so there were a few people around, but they weren't really interested in what we were doing.
We walked across the lawn and along the side of the building to find a way in.
Surprisingly enough, the door was open.
The next surprise was the condition of the place. There wasn't a lot of vandalism or graffiti, and apparently, the copper thieves hadn't discovered the hotel yet.
Due to the relatively short time of abandonment, there was no real decay, and the hotel didn't seem to have bothered with expensive furniture, so there really weren't any neat scenes to be photographed. It was a bit disappointing, but in the end, it was another location we explored together with a good friend - and I think that in the end, I managed to squeeze one or two nice shots out of my camera ;)

It took us about an hour to explore the hotel. When we were finished, we went back to the car, had a quick breakfast and drove off to the next location.

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

Tour Report: Sanatorium Supra

This is something you don't see everyday. Following a tip from a local, we drove to a town that is very well-known for having a lot of sanatoriums - abandoned and not abandoned.
There was one abandoned sanatorium that we hadn't explored yet, and it was kind of our destination.
We parked the car on a public parking space that wasn't too far away. It was still raining, and I decided to go for a short walk to get a quick look in the sanatorium. It really wasn't worth to take photos. I went through the entire building - it was completely vandalized, and a lot of trash was lying around on the floors. There was no reason for me to take out the camera.
But as I've said - the sanatorium wasn't the goal of this trip. The real destination was the fairly new small heating plant right next to it.
Someone had obviously used it to store some old cars inside it - and these were the reason for us to drop by.
We found two Toyota Supra and one BMW Series 02.
All three cars were in pretty good shape, taking into account that the door had been open for quite some time.
The three cars took up much of the free space in the heating plant, so it was a bit hard to get the photos. This - and the fact that there was a lot of traffic right outside the door - is the reason that I only have the photos you find see in this post.

There is no historical information regarding the cars; but I know that they have been removed at some point late in 2018. The sanatorium next door burned down only two weeks after our visit.