Tour Report: Soviet Nuclear Weapons Depot B.

As you may have seen on the photos in my last post, the weather on our tour in summer of 2018 together with our friend Torsten from North Urbex was a bit erratic. It couldn't seem to decide between sun, clouds and rain; so it gave us all of it in varying intensity.

It wasn't the hottest day of the summer, but it was still pretty hot as we started our walk down a long road that led us from the airport's garrison past a small guard house towards a hidden facility deep in the woods - an abandoned special weapons depot of the Group of Soviet Armed Forces in Germany. Here, the Soviets stored free-fall nuclear bombs for the 911th Fighter-Bomber Regiment. This place was our main objective for this first part of the tour, and we knew that it was going to be a pretty long way. Unfortunately, the weather apparently thought that it would be nice to play a little game with us and give us a nice little mix of sun and showers...

Heavy backpacks, hot and humid weather and the occasional rain shower - we had quite a nice walk through the woods, before we finally arrived at our destination. We took a little break to have a snack and "recover" from the walk, while we checked out the area and looked for a way into the warhead storage bunker.

There was one, and it was pretty small and full of spiders, so my wife decided to keep enjoying the weather outside as Torsten and I snaked through a tiny access and into the handling bunker that made up the front part of the storage facility. Coming inside from the heat, the cool (but stale) air was rather enjoyable, and we took or time to explore the bunker and take our photos.

Bunkers don't usually offer spectacular views in terms of photography, because they're mostly concrete, have no revolutionary architectural features, were raided by copper thieves, and if you're hoping for beautiful available light - forget it. This bunker was a little different, because - even if lots of things had been removed - it still had a lot of the metal in it, so we could actually get a pretty good idea of how various things were operated. In addition, I had never before had the chance to check out a bunker of the 'Basalt' type, and I was truly amazed at the sight of the huge steel doors that separated the handling bunker from the actual storage bunker.

After checking out the main parts of the bunker, we moved on to explore the technical parts inside the bunker, and even here, many relics were still there, so Torsten and I had a lot to see before we crawled back out and finally saw daylight again :)

After another short break, we went on to also take a look at the buildings surrounding the facility, but they were mostly just ruins, so we began our walk back to the car - after all, we had another location on our list for the day....

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

Tour Report: Soviet Airfield "Hypericum"

During our summer vacation in 2018, we had planned a day of touring together with our dear friend Torsten from North Urbex. Due to the distance (he lives about 250 kilometers away) and frequent on-call-duty on his side, we rarely get the chance for a meeting - but in this case, it all worked out really nicely, although Torsten had to drive a bit farther to meet up with us.

At the time, we were staying in a nice little hotel south of Berlin, and we had planned to explore some of the Soviet relics in the area, so we met with Torsten in the morning after breakfast to plan our exploration. The first spot that we had on our list was an abandoned nuclear weapons depot that had been used by the Soviet Army until the early 1990s. We drove for about an hour to get there. 

The depot is located near a former Soviet airfield and couldn't be reached by car, so we had to park somewhere on the abandoned airfield. We found a place near one of the airplane shelters, and we had to walk a few kilometers to get to the weapons storage bunkers. The path that we had chosen led us right across the airfield's garrison, so we decided to take a quick peek in one or two of the buildings. It was only a short stop on the way, as we were on a relatively tight timetable for the other location that we had planned to visit, so we only took a few photos of the airplane shelters and inside one of the buildings before following the path towards the nuclear weapons depot.

Here are a few photos we took of the airfield's/garrison's remains. To find out about the history of this airfield, click the button below.

Tour Report: Railway Repair Factory H. [Revisit]

We'd had our first "encounter" with this abandoned factory in summer of 2015, when we had it on our list of possible explorations. At that time, however, we could see that the place was pretty busy - we could see construction workers and a security service. They weren't in any of the buildings that we wanted to explore, and we probably could have gotten in without being seen, but we decided that the risk was too high.

About a year later, I got the chance to try again. I was in town to meet some friends, and I took the opportunity to go for a bit of exploring. I found a pretty cool access to the place and was completely alone the entire time - it was amazing!

So when we were in the area during our summer vacation in 2018, we decided to try again, so that my wife also had the chance to explore this neat place.

It was a really hot day (just like every day was a really hot day during that particular summer...), so we tried to find a parking spot that didn't involve walking too far. As we had gathered our gear, we headed towards our access - it was still the same access that I'd used more than two years earlier, and it was still open!

As we entered the abandoned factory halls, silence engulfed us. It seemed as if the thick, hot air swallowed up every sound that tried to make its way in from the outside. The sun took care of the lighting for us, and nature had painted the walls and floors in the most lovely shades of green.

The place hadn't really changed, it still was as beautiful and colorful as I remembered it. We took our time walking through every single factory hall, exploring every corner and enjoying the fact that we were completely alone in this huge place.

After about three hours, we left the place and got back into the car. We still had to drive about 150 kilometers to the next station our summer tour. For the next day we had planned to meet up with a friend to explore a few relics of the Soviet occupation in Eastern Germany - so stay tuned!

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