All abandoned: Chernobyl / Pripyat, Nara Dreamland, Anti-Zombie Fortress, Japanese Sex Museum – and many, many more! Plus: North Korea Special – 2 trips, 16 days / 14 nights! As seen on CNN…
Military explorations are always some of the most uncomfortable ones as you never know how abandoned or risky they really are – and what the consequences will be if getting caught…
Luckily exploring this abandoned shooting range near Dudenhofen in Germany was a rather relaxed operation. After spending a couple of hours at the pretty impressive *German Countryside Retirement Home*, my sister Sabine and I went to a small town outside of Speyer to have a look at a rather little known location similar to the *Military Shooting Range Neustadt*, which we explored three years prior. The front entrance featured a massive locked gate with large warning signs (Military Area! No trespassing! Contraventions will be prosecuted!), but it didn’t take us too long to find a rather easy way in. Interestingly enough the first things we found weren’t signs of a military installation, but dozens of boxes for beekeeping, probably put there by an amateur apiarist… and countless bees flying around. A blast from the past, because while I was studying Japanese history, I had to get credits outside my main subject, too – so I participated in a hands-on class about bees and beekeeping taught by the biology department; four hours every two weeks, one of the most amazing experiences of my university days! Unfortunately the abandoned shooting range itself wasn’t that impressive – a couple of concrete arches, partly wooden clad. No big bunker or a large bullet trap. Nevertheless a nice little outdoor exploration on a sunny summer day. Perfect as a filler in a busy week like this…
If everything would have gone according to plan, I would have never been able to explore this abandoned nursing home somewhere in the mountains of Germany…
Japan is a great country for urbex, because of the general “out of sight, out of mind” and dodging responsibility attitude – plenty of buildings demolished a long time ago in other countries survive for years that way; places like *Nara Dreamland* wouldn’t happen there as a liquidator would step in and squeeze out every cent possible.
Germany on the other hand has a problem with bureaucracy and too much paperwork in general. Things that are clearly regulated and should take weeks or months to take care of take forever to approve – and then everything grinds to a stop, because somebody though he saw a rare frog nearby…
I guess something similar happened to the abandoned retirement home my sister Sabine and I were exploring during my trip to Germany in 2015. The facility was run by the Arbeiterwohlfahrt (AWO, „Workers‘ Welfare Association“), who replaced it with a new one in 2005. The local city administration was aware of those plans, which required some planning, and decided in March 2004 to rezone the property from Gemeinbedarf (“public good”) to Wohnbaufläche (“general residential building area”), making it possible to build single-family houses with gardens that are so characteristic for this town. Sadly there is not much else known about the history of this retirement home – when it was built, how many rooms it had, what happened after it was closed…
When Sabine and I explored this location in summer 2015, almost all external walls were reinforced with iron lattice fence, and it took us a while to find a way in. The solid brick-built square construction was in decent condition, except for the fact that it was pretty much gutted and rather vandalized. Here and there we found small piles of cables, metal or fluorescent tubes, every other window still had little images on them children created for their grandparents. The former dining was still decorated with a piece of art hanging on the wall, a wheelchair standing in front of it. But overall it was a pretty empty building with a slightly creepy atmosphere. In it’s heyday though I am sure it was quite a sight, especially thanks to the large inner courtyard and the beautiful location in a Palatinate valley.
Do you like beer? So much that you would like to bathe in it? No, because it sounds like a horrible idea?! If only somebody would have told the last owners of the Kurhaus Stromberg…
The history of the Kurhaus (“cure house”) or Kurhotel (“spa hotel”) in Stromberg began in 1909, when a teachers’ association revealed plans to build a convalescent home in the picturesque small town near Bingen, Germany. Planning and financing took five years (almost everything was a bit slower a century ago…), but on April 16th 1914 the laying of the foundation stone took place. After “the Great War” erupted, construction was put on hiatus, and finally finished in 1921 – mainly as a recreation home for the “Rheinischen Provinziallehrerverband” (that teachers’ association…), but also as a hotel and restaurant for the general public. In 1933 the Nazis took over pretty much all associations, including this one, and only years later the spa hotel became a military hospital. After the even less great war (WW2) and shorts stints under American and French military management, the Kurhotel was turned into a pulmonary health institute for released German POWs. State control continued in the 1940s, but switched from military to civilian use in 1948 when Rhineland-Palatinate’s ministry for social afairs took over… and finally returned the Kurhaus to the teachers in 1953. Turmoil continued as the hotel at first lost money and then was sold to the Deutsches Rotes Kreuz (DRK, “German Red Cross”). In the following year the institution apparently made money and was expanded several times, until it was closed in 1983. After six years of maintenance without being used, the Kurhaus Stromberg was repurposed as a transition dormitory for ethnic German immigrants to Germany, when the Iron Curtain came down in 1989. In the mid-90s the DRK sold the hotel to a private investor, who did nothing with it until 1997, when the Hotel- und Restaurantbetrieb Kurhaus Stromberg GmbH (Hotel and Restaurant Kurhaus Stromberg Limited) introduced the previously mentioned beer spa… The sobering awakening followed in 2001, when the beery dream ended once and for all.
Originally built in a style called Domestic Revival and equipped with a mansard hip roof, the Kurhaus Stromberg is now considered a national heritage site under monument protection – at the same time it suffered from almost a decade of vandalism and 15 years without maintenance, which means that it can’t be quickly demolished, but it’s also highly unlikely that anybody would invest in the rundown building and its ragged garden the size of a park.
Since I focus on urban exploration in Japan, looking for abandoned places in other countries doesn’t have high priority to me… especially as I usually don’t have much time to travel within a vacation anyway. When I’m back home in Germany for two or three weeks per year, I usually explore in the southwestern part as this is the area where most of my family and friends live. The Kurhotel Stromberg looked kind of interesting, but the information I found was contradictive – some said the place was inaccessible, some claimed it was completely vandalized. Well, it turned out that the latter was true. Upon arrival my sister Sabine and I had the place to ourselves, but it took less than half an hour for about a dozen teenagers to arrive – on the one hand claiming to be surprised that the hotel was accessible at all, on the other hand making noise like a wrecking crew. It got even worse after they dragged it some boxes and bags, and it turned that they were trying to shoot an amateur horror movie. I told them that I would shoot some videos and that they might want to be quiet if they don’t want to end up on Youtube, but much like the noisy tourists at *Nara Dreamland* and the *Former Embassy of Iraq in East Berlin* they claimed that they don’t care and that I should just shoot whenever I want…
Both the Kurhotel Stromberg’s changeful history as well as the grand structure with its gorgeous white exterior reminded me of the *Maya Tourist Hotel*, probably the most traditional abandoned place in all of Japan. Both places are pretty much empty and quite vandalized now, both are used for photo and video shoots, both offer a couple of interesting angles, yet both are only shadows of their former glory. It’s a shame what happened to the hotel, but I guess that is what happens to the low hanging fruits. So if you ever wondered why I more and more often use generic names like *Kanto Hospital* or *Japanese Luxury Spa Hotel* – places like the Kurhotel Stromberg are the answer…
Once a massive air base and home to 13000 people, now a partly abandoned civilian airport – the Flughafen Frankfurt-Hahn is kind of a zombie facility in the middle of nowhere, more dead than alive, surrounded by countless abandoned and partly abandoned buildings.
The tax wasting drama began 1951 in Paris, when the occupying French forces decided to build a military airport in the countryside of Rhineland-Palatinate; 100 kilometers west of Frankfurt, Germany. A year later the United States took over and expanded the airfield to the seventh biggest Air Force base in Europe and the second largest in Germany – thanks to the 7356th Air Base Group. In late summer of 1953 the 50th Fighter Bomber Wing was transferred from Cannon Air Force Base in Clovis, New Mexico, and consisted of the 10th Fighter-Bomber, the 81st Fighter-Bomber and the 417th Fighter-Bomber squadrons; the last one being commanded by legendary test pilot Charles Elwood “Chuck” Yeager. Three years later the 50th Fighter Bomber Wing was transferred to France for safety reasons, the Americans being worried that Warsaw Pact forced could overrun West Germany and get hold of the wing’s nuclear weapons. Over the years many different units / squadrons were stationed at Hahn Air Base, including the 496th Fighter-Interceptor Squadron, the 7425th Air Base Group, and the 50th Tactical Fighter Wing. When the Cold War ended, Hahn AB was one of seven major US air bases within 100 kilometers – and the first one to be closed. In 1991 all flying units were inactivated or transferred, and on September 30th 1993 most of Hahn Air Base (consisting of 672 apartments in 43 buildings, 25 barracks, 22 office buildings, 52 repair shops, 51 storage buildings, 343 hangars and bunkers, 23 shops, 5 schools, a hospital consisting of four buildings as well as more than 30 leisure facilities, including a golf course, a football field and a shooting range!) was returned to the German authorities, who had already decided to turn it into a civilian airport.
While current the name of the Frankfurt-Hahn Airport is borderline deceit of potential customers (it is located about 100 kilometers away from Frankfurt in another German federal state without a train or direct highway connection), the intentions were good – the remains of Hahn Air Base basically provided everything you needed to run a civilian airport, due to its remote location it came with a night flight permission, and Frankfurt Airport (the real one, 10 kilometers south of Frankfurt) was at its limits anyway. At first named Rhein-Mosel Airport and mostly run by Fraport (the same company responsible for Frankfurt Airport), the former military airport grew quickly from 19k passengers in 1997 to almost 4 million passengers in 2007 – but neither growth nor size means financial success, so Fraport sold its 65% shares to the federal state of Rhineland-Palatinate for 1 EUR – and 120 million EUR in debt. In the following years the state tried to consolidate the airport, but passenger numbers dropped significantly to less than 2.5 million in 2014; a rather insignificant number in comparison to Frankfurt Airport’s 59.5 million. Despite losing about 10 million EUR per year and the state’s futile efforts to sell at least parts of its shares to investors, Rhineland-Palatinate keeps Frankfurt-Hahn running and is even investing it its future, reactivating / expanding a decommissioned railroad track by 2018 to make access to the airport more comfortable.
Meanwhile other parts of the former Hahn Air Base became abandoned and started to fall into disrepair. Despite most buildings being used by the Frankfurt-Hahn Airport, a police academy, and rented to private companies running a variety of businesses, a lot of them were of no / little commercial value in an area with low population density… especially the barracks / apartment buildings and their parking lots. Some have been demolished to accommodate the needs of the new civilian airport, but quite a few are still standing there, with open fences and barely visible “private property” signs.
Although other facilities in rather close proximity are still in use, most of the abandoned apartment buildings suffered severely from vandalism and consequential damages like mold; not so much externally, but inside – hardly any graffiti, but lots of smashed windows, shelves and fixtures. Some of the buildings have been boarded up after initial damages, but after 20 years of standing around without being used, you can see that whoever is in charge of the former housing area has basically given up on it. A handful of blocks were still in decent condition, but most of them looked like they were beyond repair. A few hundred meters away from the main area of abandonment we found a closed “Ringeltaube” (wood pigeon) shop, right next to and in the same building as the commissary of the Hahn AB. (I didn’t know about them either, but my sister was with the German Air Force for several years and did training at / with Lufthansa – and Ringeltaube is a chain of shops exclusively for Lufthansa employees; food and non-food.)
I guess it’s safe to say (and a bad pun) that the future of the airport Frankfurt-Hahn is up in the air – and so is the future of the remains of Hahn Air Base. Looking at the area on GoogleMaps, it is pretty obvious that the level of abandonment has increased since those satellite photos were taken – and so has the amount of destruction. While there were no signs of active demolition work, some of the apartment buildings still visible online are already missing… and the parking lot in front of the Ringeltaube / commissary is not nearly as busy anymore; it actually went down from several dozen cars to… zero. With that in mind it’s only a matter of time until all visible signs of Hahn Air Base are nothing but a memory, absorbed by Frankfurt-Hahn Airport… and nature. Let’s hope that the airport will survive the current struggle and be profitable soon – the livelihood of hundreds, probably thousands of people depends on it. And there are already enough abandoned airports all over the world… *even one in Frankfurt*!
The Internationale Baumaschinenfabrik AG (IBAG, „International Construction Machinery Inc.“) in Neustadt, Germany, was a large manufacturer of building site equipment – from rock crushers over transit-truck mixers to revolving tower cranes, the IBAG built it all… until 1997, then they went bankrupt.
For about 1.5 decades the 6 hectare large area wasn’t used at all due to inherited waste, rundown structures and the lack of interest of potential investors – a fact that didn’t keep the state from declaring the old machine hall a cultural monument in 2001; which meant that the main structure had to be preserved and couldn’t be demolished. (It was built in 1910 by Wayss and Freytag, a famous German construction company.) From 2005 on the city started to develop a… development plan, deciding how much of the area could be used commercially and how much had to be residential. Since the former IBAG plant was located right next to a commuter train station (Neustadt-Böbig), an investor was found and rehabilitation work / cleaning up started in 2012 – soon after I explored the area with my sister Sabine in a last chance visit.
Due to the (de)construction activity the area was fortified with barbed wire and high fences, reports about security made the rounds, but nevertheless we found a way in. After just minutes on the premises, we just had left a room with a rusty waggon and went into one of a main halls, a young man ran past by us, completely ignoring us, leaving the site as if chased by the devil himself. Quite rattled by the surreal event we followed the guy outside, but weren’t able to catch him – nor was he followed by security, the police or guard dogs. After a few minutes we went back in, passed through another hall and heard noises again… voices… somebody singing… the radio of a security guard? No, somebody was singing live in the hall next to ours; the IBAG Hall, the one under monumental protection. We finished exploring the massive hall we were in (including a wall with a graffiti, collapsed / brought down after the artist was done with his work) and headed over to the IBAG Hall, the name still in large rusty letters above the half-opened roll-up door. The singing voice belonged to a gorgeous blonde of casting show age, but she and her filming companion were about to wrap up and left soon thereafter – once again leaving us alone on the risky premises on a workday afternoon. The IBAG Hall and its extensions to the side were absolutely beautiful, but thanks to large windows and big gates we were exposed almost all the time despite being inside a building. I addition to that we were running late for an appointment, so we wrapped up ourselves and left – if you are interested in the IBAG Hall, you’ll find more interesting shots in the video than in the gallery; sorry about that.
About a year after Sabine and I explored the Internationale Baumaschinenfabrik AG (in the summer of 2012) all the buildings on the premises were demolished, except for the IBAG Hall. Redevelopment of the area began soon after, including a supermarket, a drug store and 130 residential units; split across detached houses, duplex houses and row houses. The first project, the supermarket, was planned to open in summer 2015…
Sadly I didn’t find out much about the IBAG’s pre-bankruptcy history, probably because the company existed before the age of the internet – and while it was a big one with international ties all over the world, it wasn’t a brand of worldwide recognition; especially in its later years.
Exploring the IBAG was quite an unusual experience. Usually I avoid places with construction activities and security, but in this case I was just too curious – and of course the exploration turned out to be as nerve-wrecking and surreal as feared; from the runner just minutes after our arrival to the singing blonde towards the end. Since there are not many huge abandoned industrial sites in Japan, I was happy to finally explore one, though in the end there was not that much to see. Most rooms were already cleared and the two or three buildings we didn’t enter looked extremely dilapidated; potential death traps. But overall it was an interesting exploration – nothing mind-blowing, like the *Abandoned Dynamite Mine*, but still a good exploration…
Urban exploration is dangerous, even more so if you are a hedgehog. For humans it can be frustrating in addition, especially in Germany, where vandalism is on the rise…
Three years ago, when I was visiting family and friends back home, I did my first solo exploration in Germany, the *Shipyard Germersheim*; you can read all about the location’s history and how much I enjoyed my first visit in the previous article. It was 9 years after the shipyard closed, two years after it was used as a location for a famous German TV show and about 4 months after a geocache was hidden. The back had been taken over by a car sales and repair company, the front was abandoned and in rather good condition – so much for the situation in 2011.
In the past three years since my first visit several contradictive rumors had popped up. Some said that the shipyard had been demolished to use the prime property for high-class apartment buildings, others claimed that the area had been taken over by a boat retailer and repair shop. Sadly none of it turned out to be true when I revisited the shipyard with my sister Sabine less than four weeks ago. Instead the area had been trashed by vandals…
I had a bad feeling when we approached the shipyard from the back, after I realized that the car shop was gone. During my first visit I was kind of disappointed that I wasn’t able to explore the whole area, but I guess in the end it was a blessing in disguise as the business kept the vandals away. We followed the road and turned left, to the main entrance of the shipyard. This time the big gate was open, but the access to the river in the back, where I spotted some anglers and geocachers last time, was blocked by a padlocked gate. The main building showed signs of massive amounts of vandalism. Pretty much every window was broken – and when we headed to the main entrance, we saw that not only the safety glass doors were smashed, but that somebody stole the huge metal SG emblem above the entrance. Last time I lay on the ground to take a picture of the entrance, but sadly it was impossible to recreate the photo as there were glass shards all over the place.
We decided to have a closer look at the manufacturing buildings first. Most of them were locked last time, but this time they were cracked wide open – three years ago broom-clean, this time covered by trash; bad graffiti everywhere. Not good stuff like at the *La Rainbow Hotel & Tower*, but really bad scribbling you can find all over the place in Germany at abandoned places, along train tracks, under bridges… and pretty much everywhere else where those cowards can do damage with low risk of being seen or heard. Don’t get me wrong, I am a huge fan of high-class graffiti art, but why anybody would want to deface their own surrounding is beyond me!
On the way to the back, Sabine and I saw a hedgehog in some kind of uncovered manhole. It was a very hot and humid day, so we assumed that the little fella was probably dead already. Luckily we had a second look after we came back from the waterfront with its crane, empty halls and an empty circus trailer – the hedgehog was in a different corner, so he definitely was alive. Neither of us was eager to rescue the spiny guy with bare hands, so my Sabine climbed into the waist-deep hole and I found a former speed sign lying on the ground; we were able to shove the hedgehog on the sign with a slat. I named it Gianluigi and carried him to a place in the shadow far away from the manhole, but little Gian looked pretty much dead already on this hot and humid summer day. Luckily we brought some water with us, so Sabine created a little puddle right in front of Gian’s face and we continued to the main building.
During my first visit the building was empty, but almost untouched – only the big safe on the top floor had been toppled and natural decay started to set in with an unfortunate amount of mold. This time there was scratchwork all over the place, window were broken; some idiots even started to tear down a wall. If they would put all this crazy amount of energy into positive things, the world would be a much better place! Instead the Shipyard Germersheim went from an interesting exploration to a shithole (pardon my French!) in less than three years… To see how much damage was really done, I recommend watching both videos; the one from this article and the second one from my first visit. It’s a shame how vandalism can ruin the atmosphere of a location completely!
But to end on a positive note, let me give you a final update on Gianluigi – he was gone even before we left the office building. Sabine checked on him from the second floor and found the speed sign empty. I guess he found himself an even cooler spot and something to eat…
Urbex is quite an unpredictable hobby, especially in Japan, where wrecking crews can demolish buildings in no time; abandoned or not. (It actually happened once that I went on vacation and when I came back a building in the neighborhood was turned into an asphalted parking lot…) But demolition is not the only enemy urbexers have. Sometimes you go to a place and you think you know exactly where it is, but it turns out that your research wasn’t good enough. Luckily that never happen to me, but I’ve been on trips with fellow explorers who carried wrongly marked maps – and in that case is can be enough to be off by a street or two and you will never find what you are looking for (it almost happened to me when looking for the *Amano Clinic*, a frustrating and time-consuming experience!). Sometimes buildings have been boarded-up and are therefore inaccessible now, on other occasions they are still locked and electronically secured, which explains why your source only had outside photos. Every once in a while you run into nosy neighbors who keep a close eye on you, and sometimes places are so trashed that it’s not worth having a closer look. The latest trend, at least in Germany, is turning abandoned military bases into solar parks – they get rid of the remaining buildings and use the vast areas of concrete and asphalt to set up some green energy. With no good videos and barely a handful of photos, those locations are not worth an own article, but as compilations they should be entertaining enough to carry this blog for a week. Welcome to the first issue of “Worst Of” – 14 disappointing locations on 6 exploration days!
The first dud of my trip to Germany in 2013 was the Türkenlouis-Kaserne (a.k.a. Quartier Turkenlouis) in Rastatt. Built by the French occupational forces in the 1950s and left behind in 1999, the barracks weren’t able to find a new owner, so they were demolished in 2011 – I had a hunch that it happened, but I wanted to see for myself and was (not) disappointed.
Just a few kilometers away I had a look at the vandalized entrance of the BWR, Bauknecht Werk Rastatt, founded originally as Waggonfabrik Rastatt (Rastatt Coach Factory) in 1897. The company struggled several times from the 1970s on, was split up and partly closed. Upon my visit, parts of the area were used by the BWR Waggonreparatur GmbH (BWR Wagon Repair Company) – and their employees kept an eye on the abandoned area.
Down the street in walking distance I found a partly collapsed, unnamed factory. Sadly the employees of a neighboring business had a company party on their parking lot…
On the way home I stopped at what supposed to be an abandoned gravel pit, but there were cars parked on the premises and a diving competition at the nearby lake prohibited any reasonable exploration.
But that’s not all! The fifth dud of the day (out of six locations!) was the Special Ammunitions Site Philippsburg, which actually looked quite active – it was probably used for training by the police or other groups. What a frustrating day, especially for my childhood friend Nina, who actually did all the driving. Sorry again, Nina – but that’s urbex sometimes… 😦
The next day I was going exploring with my sister Sabine. At the fortified Lampertheim Training Area I took a crappy photo through the fence – and the closed bunkers of the Panzerwald Viernheim were very disappointing in comparison to the awesome *Hochspeyer Munitions Storage*.
The HMS I explored with my friend Catherine and it was in walking distance of another former military base, which is still visible on GoogleMaps, but has been demolished more than a year ago to be replaced with one of said green energy facilities, in this case the Solarpark Metro Tango Ost.
Since my article about the *Cambrai-Fritsch-Kaserne* was a huge success I decided to go back there on a second day of exploration with my sister. We parked in the area and walked for like 10 meters, when a security guard stopped his car right next to us and forbid us to take photos. Straight ahead. No polite small talk, not friendly asking to refrain from taking photos. “I forbid you to take photos!” Well, I’m not a media lawyer, but as far as I know you can take photos on public streets pretty much wherever / whenever you want in Germany – hence Google’s Street View (though some people in Germany had their houses pixeled like Japanese porn, but they were not able to have Google remove the images completely). Since the guy acted like a stubborn a**hole right from the beginning of course I pretended to agree and just waited until he was around the next. He wasn’t even smart enough to come back two minutes later to see if we would really obey his rule. And nothing much had changed anyway, so I took a few snapshots and then we moved on to the Santa Barbara Village down the road and across the street – it was interesting to see though that they tightened security at the CFK instead of turning it into student dormitories, as the original plan was. The St. Barbara Village on the other hand is an example for successful privatization. Once a housing area for the surrounding barracks it is now a neat, quiet residential area and far from being abandoned.
The Old Argonner Barracks in Hanau are currently under redevelopment – the housing area is getting renovated, the former school on the premises is now a special educational center to support kids in the areas learning, language development and physical development, called Elisabeth-Schmitz-Schule. (I took a quick video, but with a different camera, so please excuse the quality…)
The Ray Barracks in Friedberg are famous for one special soldier, Rock and Roll legend Elvis Presley, who was part of the 3rd Armored Division and met his wife Priscilla while being stationed there. The base was closed in 2007 and it seems like not much has happened since then – the grass kept growing and the surrounding fence was airtight, so my buddy Torsten and I left after a couple of minutes, realizing that it was a big mistake to suffer through a painfully long evening rush hour traffic jam…
Last on the list of failures in Germany 2013 was a three location streak with my old friend Gil.
The Quartier Castelnau, a former French military base south of Trier, was under redevelopment in its third year and one big construction site. We found a way onto the premises in a very remote part, but there was not much to see, barely worth spending any time on – so we didn’t and moved on.
The Quartier DeLattre, another French occupational military base, was definitely closed, but not really abandoned either. Parts of it were used by the municipal works, but it didn’t look like there was much activity on the premises. Much more so outside. Lots of kids and walkers, including an old French guy and his wife who wanted to have another look at the place he spent a couple of years at almost half a century prior.
Third and final flop of the day (and the trip) was the so-called Weingeisthaus (Spirit of the Wine House, an old mansion in the middle of a vineyard, famous amongst urban explorers for its beautiful exterior and the dilapidated condition inside. It seemed though that somebody invested quite a bit of time and money to keep intruders out, installing two lines of pretty tight fences. Running out of time that day and respecting the effort, Gil and I took a couple of shots from the distance before leaving.
And that’s it. Lots of short impression, but nothing really spectacular. What do you think I should do with small / failed explorations in the future? Ignore them completely and pretend they never happened, write collections like this one or publish individual small articles, but keep them as the lead for only a day instead of a week?
The Radio Relay Site Langerkopf is a relic of the Cold War and one of the urbex highlights of my summer trip to Germany in 2013. Sometimes referred to as CRC Langerkopf (CRC = Control and Reporting Center), this former US communications installation looks like a mix of summer camp and high security prison. It is named after the highest point of the Mosisberg (Mount Mosis?), called Langer Kopf (long head).
The history of the Langerkopf site dates back to the 1950s and 60s. Back then the base was indeed a Control and Reporting Center, manned by the 603rd AC&W Sq (603rd Aircraft Control and Warning Squardron) and featuring a radar unit called “Surveillance Radar” just outside of the current premises. In the late 60s the station was remodeled and taken over by the Det 4, 2134th Comm Sqnd (Detachment 4, 2134th Communications Squadron) of the USAFE contingent in the area, to function as a microwave radio relay hub for the European Telefone System called AUTOVON as well as for the radio data transmission system AUTOSYN. From the 1980s on the station was operated remotely before it was shut down and partly demolished in 2007.
In late 2011 a couple of scenes for the German mystery thriller “Lost Place” (the rather ridiculous “German” term for an abandoned location… amongst both geocachers and urban explorers) was shot at the Langerkopf site. I would sum up the story for you, but the flick ended up with a 5.2 rating on imdb.com, so I guess it’s safe to say that nobody gives a damn anyway.
Also on the premises and still in use till this very day is a tiny unmanned, but definitely secured station of the AFCENT CIP 67 system (Allied Forces Central Europe Communication Improvement Program 1967).
Sadly I couldn’t find a more detailed history of the Radio Relay Site Langerkopf – and even the little I found I had to compile from half a dozen sources, both English and German. It also looks like that the whole area was locked up after my visit, with official tours now organized by BUND / AK Denkmalschutz, IG Area One and VEWA.
Despite being (in)famous for its foggy weather, my friend Catherine and I arrived in Palatine and at the Langer Kopf during the most beautiful sunshine possible. While recent photos show the heavy gate shut tight, it was wide open when we carefully approached the former military base. The massive concrete walls behind the barbed wire NATO fence were impressive to a degree that we both felt a bit intimidated. We expected a run-down collection of shacks somewhere in the woods – not a high security prison that could hold the Joker! We passed another gate to get closer, only to find all the doors of the installation busted wide open, the interior smashed to pieces; graffiti everywhere. Outside, below the radio relay tower, some kind of generator. Heading further east we passed what once must have been some kind of security checkpoint with what looked like embrasures. The building there, yellow and in good condition from the outside, turned out to be a gym on the upper and an administrative building on the lower floor – severely damaged on the inside by arson, but at least not completely burned out like the next building.
Back outside and the smell of burning still in my nose, I headed over to the AFCENT CIP 67 station – barbed wire fence, use of firearms warning, really nothing to see.
Well, nothing except for the back part of the Langerkopf Radio Relay Site. Which looked pretty much exactly what I had expected in the first place: severely vandalized, decaying buildings from the 1960s, 70s and maybe 80s. The first one to the right must have been the barracks for the personnel (basically gutted now), followed by some light shacks beyond repair, mainly consisting of brittle wood and thin metal. To the left another building that looked decent from the outside, but was severely damaged inside – while about every second abandoned place in Japan shows signs of airsoft players, Europeans prefer paintball; you can imagine the results… and if you can’t, just have a look at the photo gallery below!
At the farthest end of the base, close to the barbed wire fence, we explored a one room building with turquoise pipes and storage tanks, probably the (backup) power supply of the station. Not only did we not expect to see that lovely color at a highly secured military base – we also didn’t expect to find a July 1991 copy of Model Railroader! If you left yours there, you might be happy to hear that it’s still waiting to be picked up…
The Langerkopf Communication Station was close to what I would call a perfect exploration. In the middle of nowhere, open, unique, in decent condition overall (or at least in interesting condition), just the right size, beyond my expectations, fantastic weather, lovely company. In a perfect world the place would have been barely touched, but considering reality, this was pretty much as good as it gets. Good times – especially after exploring the *Hochspeyer Munitions Storage* earlier that day! 🙂
The Hochspeyer Munitions Storage (HMS, a.k.a. Ammunition Storage Annex Hochspeyer) was one of the most fascinating and mysterious military installations I visited during my trip to Germany in the summer of 2013. I actually wanted to visit the place two years prior right after exploring of what was left of *Sembach Air Base*, but sadly we ran out of time back then after my buddy Gil and I were surprised by a cloudburst…
Just a couple of weeks ago I came back with my friend Catherine. The Palatine area is perfect to combine long walks with urban exploration, so I chose the forests around K-Town (commonly known as Kaiserslautern) for a little catch up trip. The first location we went to turned out to be proof of Germany’s interesting energy policy and a terrible disaster for fans of abandoned military bases as it was converted into a gigantic solar farm; the next one, Hochspeyer Munitions Storage, on the other hand was kind of a jackpot.
We entered the premises via a road blocked by two concrete barriers – no cars allowed, only bikes and pedestrians. We actually didn’t see a single “Don’t trespass!” or “Trespassers will be shot!” sign, so we felt very comfortable there, despite the fact that there was not much to see at first. Just a single green building, the interior smashed to pieces, and a big asphalted area with only basic foundations left – probably a motor pool half a century ago. Heck, even the fence was mostly gone, with only a couple of concrete posts left. Although I did quite a bit of research on the Hochspeyer Munitions Storage I am still not sure whether or not this area was officially part of it – if it was, it was mostly demolished and abandoned decades ago. But the HMS dates back to the 1960s, so it’s rather likely that both area saw activity at the same time back in the days. And while one part was left deserted, the other got modernized again and again…
Deeper into the forest Catherine and I found a locked gate, part of a really tall barbed-wire fence with a series of lamp posts every 25 meters set 5 meters behind the fence. Despite its location in the middle of the woods this area was carefully deforested and secured – trespassers could be seen easily from large distances. Abandoned or not, the people who planned this area knew what they were doing, eager to keep people out. Everything there was in great condition at first sight: the fence, the gate, the locks, the lamp posts, the security perimeter… only some open doors at a building in the distance indicated that the area really might have been abandoned. So we looked for a way in and indeed found one.
We quickly approached the green building, eager not to be seen from people on or off the premises – with Ramstein Air Base not being far away we saw plenty of stuff flying across our heads. The flat part consisted of a machinery room, restrooms and a couple of office / conference rooms, the rather high part seemed to have been a storage and / garage, probably to de/load vehicles. SIgns were either in English or bilingual, English and German. The most interesting one was just airbrushed onto the wall:
Explosive Limits
1.1 5,000 lbs
1.2 5,000 lbs
1.3 10,000 lbs
1.4 Physical Capacity
Personnel Limits
2 Supervisors
5 Workers
2 Casuals
Okay… this definitely wasn’t the average administrative building you see when entering abandoned military bases, this was serious stuff! And everything looked pretty new, aside from some vandalism. Was this area really abandoned?
Catherine and I continued to explore the area. Next we found the former main gate with the gatehouse. One window open, others smashed – raw violence, because those windows were made from bulletproof glass. Again, serious stuff. When I opened a small door on the back I could feel that it was really heavy, despite the fact that it opened smoothly. The interior of the building was mostly gone, but you could see that once it must have been stuffed with tons of electronic devices. Probably not too long ago, given that you could basically start to reuse the building after a couple of hours of repairs. Nothing too serious, but probably costly.
I have to admit that I felt a bit more more uneasy inside the fenced area than outside in the 60s foundation area, and that didn’t change when finally reached the bunker area, tire tracks still on the ground, low vegetation, filled water reservoirs after a hot summer, the pool liner still in great condition. This site was definitely closed, but was it really abandoned? That thought resounded my mind like spoken words in the open bunkers. The acoustics there were fantastic, especially since I am so used to shut bunkers, sitting there inaccessibly everywhere in forests all over German. Finally being able to enter some of them was amazing, one of those minor urbex highlights you stumble across every once in a while. As was a nearby tool shack, where the silhouettes of the equipment were painted onto the wall, so even Private Paula would know where to put things back. Another minor highlight was that one bunker that was built differently in many ways and had a gigantic safe built in, installed by Garny – founded 200 years ago in 1813. (This was a newer model, of course…)
Usually it takes me months, sometimes even years, to write about my explorations, but the Hochspeyer Munitions Storage was a truly exciting exploration, one that made me write this article while I was still in Germany, taking an afternoon of doing research about what the place really was.
Sadly not much is known about the Hochspeyer Munitions Storage. At first I thought it was related to the *Sembach Air Base* I mentioned earlier, which it probably was at one point, but since the airfield there was closed it seems like the HMS was part of the famous Ramstein Air Base; some guy in a German internet forum claimed at one point it was a sub-camp of the USAF Depot Morbach-Wenigerath, now known as Energiepark Morbach (energy park Morbach).
The few facts are that the HMS was 88 acres big (about 356000 square meters), had 30 bunkers, was part of the USAFE (United States Air Forces in Europe), that the road there was built in 1957 thanks to a Captain Joseph T. Sampson – and that it was closed in 2007 as part of “Air Force Smart Operations for the 21 Century” (AFSO21) to save a couple of bucks. In early 2007 Ramstein’s 435th Munitions Squadron started transporting material from Hochspeyer to their main base, the last truck leaving on October 12th of the same year. Apparantly most of it were BLU-109 bombs, nasty buggers that are used against HDBTs (Hard and Deep Buried Targets) and can break through 1.8 meters of ferroconcrete before exploding. Which explains the setup of the facility – it’s the kind of technology you don’t want to have fallen into wrong hands… and the kind of technology local civilians shouldn’t know about.
The rest is vague. Some people claim that the area was returned to Germany, others say that it is still under the control of the USAFE. (Since there were no warning signs in German I assume the area still belongs to the US. In cases like that the Bundesanstalt für Immobilienaufgaben (BIMA, Institute for Federal Real Estate) usually takes over – and they are pretty good at putting up signs. Making good use of the area? Not so much. Putting up signs? Hell yeah!) Some people claim the premises are abandoned, others say that they are still used for emergency drills and patrolled by security – or in this case rather security police.
Whatever is true, I am happy that I was able to explore the Hochspeyer Munitions Storage without causing trouble for me and my companion. It was a very memorable experience and I did as much research as possible afterwards, but if you know more about the place, having worked there or being a (hobby) historian, please feel free to add facts and anecdotes in the comments section!
The Papierfabrik Knoeckel, Schmidt & Cie. (Papierfabrik = paper mill) was without the shadow of a doubt the urbex highlight of my vacation to Germany in 2011. Ever since I moved to Japan in 2006 I spend a couple of weeks in summer back home in Germany, visiting family and friends. As much as I love Japan – I really hate the summers there. It’s hot, it’s humid and it’s dark at 8 p.m. the latest. German summers are less hot, way less humid and you can have a BBQ outside till 10 p.m. or even later. There’s actually stuff you can do after work, not just crawling under the next air-condition – which most likely is set to a smoldering 28° Celsius anyway since Japan pretends to save energy ever since Fukushima happened. (Ironically the ACs are set to 28°C in winter, too – heating is no problem, but if you wanna have some cool air you are considered the devil…) I started with urban exploration in late 2009 and when I came back to Germany in 2010 I visited *Pripyat and Chernobyl* as well as two locations in Luxembourg I yet have to write about. No urbex in Germany in 2010 for me. 2011 on the other hand saw me visiting places like the *Clubhotel Messel* and the *Cambrai-Fritsch Kaserne* – and the latter one almost prevented me from actually entering the Papierfabrik Knoeckel as I ran into some security trouble at the CFK the day before I visited the paper mill with my old friend *Gil*.
Located on both sides of a valley in the Palatinate region of Germany the Papierfabrik Knoeckel is virtually impossible to miss – if you found the right valley you are golden. The downside of that fact is the traffic ahead and behind you. Getting a parking spot is not the problem – entering the factory without being seen is. Like I said, I ran into some trouble the day before (on a former military basis, to make things worse), so I wasn’t exactly eager to jump a fence and run while being watched by potentially dozens of people. The backside of the factory seemed to be a bit quieter, so we walked along a forest road up a slope… only to run into a house where a dog started to bark and didn’t stop for at least an hour! We followed another road leading down to the factory, the damn dog still barking. Now we were separated from the factory by a small river (maybe three meters wide), once a fundamental element of every paper mill as water ran machines. Two bridges and a building span across that river, but our options were limited soon – one bridge was fenced off and the other was equipped with a modern security camera. Caught the day before, dog barking in the background, an active security system. My urge to enter the factory went down to zero and in the end it became another key moment regarding my dislike of infiltration. Not nearly as bad as the experiences at the *Noga Hotel* or the *Sunset View Inn Shah Bay Resort*, but another stepstone…
To make a long story short: We entered somehow, it was an amazing location, and it took us four hours to leave. Four overly cautious, nerve-wrecking hours that weren’t really fun at all – in hindsight it’s always easy to say that it was totally worth it since nothing went wrong, but the potential for disaster was there…
In the end I took some really neat photos at the Papierfabrik Knoeckel. Photos that work very well in both monochrome and color – which makes it one of my favorite locations in Germany, at least now that I am sitting in front of my PC. The reasons why the photos turned out that way, is because the Papierfabrik has a lot of history and grew organically. Old buildings weren’t demolished, they were reused and new buildings were constructed in addition. Some buildings still had large ciphers fitted to their walls – 1914 and 1952 I remember vividly. But the paper mill was older. Much older. 1888 saw the founding of the Knoeckel, Schmidt & Cie. GmbH (GmbH = Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung, which equals a modern Limited = company with limited liability) which turned into the Knoeckel, Schmidt & Cie. Papierfabriken AG on January 29th of 1923. (Papierfabriken means paper factories, AG = Aktiengesellschaft = joint-stock company) In 1945/46 production was partially stopped due to a shortage of raw materials and coal – the company survived World War 2 without any damages. Which is even more surprising since the factory had its own railway siding. The reason for that is the fact that paper is incredibly heavy and larger amounts are easier and more cheaply transported by trains. At one point the rival Robert Cordier AG (which produces paper since 1836!) bought 99.78 percent of the Knoeckel, Schmidt & Cie. shares (which was turned back into a GmbH in 1995 after a loss of 1.4 million Deutschmarks (0.7 million Euros) within half a year), but on August 18th of 2000 the Robert Cordier AG filed for bankruptcy. Knoeckel, producing glassine, translucent vellum paper and special papers for technical applications, wasn’t making money anymore after 112 years…
On May 30th of 2006 a conflagration that took 9 hours to extinguish destroyed several disused production sheds, making the abandoned buildings even more dangerous due to a higher risk of collapse.
Today the Papierfabrik Knoeckel shares the fate of many abandoned buildings – potential private investors, local politicians and citizens’ groups are arguing what to do with the 55.000 square meter area, but can’t agree on anything. And so the paper mill continues to decay, attracting more and more urban explorers, graffiti sprayers and vandals…
This is the *second time* I decided to publish a photo set in monochrome. I actually converted all photos and selected two sets – one in color, one in monochrome. There were hardly any overlaps, so I might publish a color set in the future, maybe along with an update on the state of the paper mill. I even converted the videos to monochrome, just for the sake of atmosphere. Exploring this location I felt like being transferred back in time to the 40s, 50s or 60s; decades most of us associate with monochrome photography. I hope you welcome this decision…
Abandoned Kansai 