Berlin Day 2

We had to prepare for a rather different second day in Berlin than our first.  Today it was all dark clothes, and closed shoes, as we were going to be exploring some of the derelict and abandoned buildings that remain throughout the city.  Kristin found a website with locations of buildings that have been abandoned, and so we set a number of them on our map to go exploring.

Schönholzer Heide

The first stop was an abandoned bunker, located in a stand of trees to the North-west of Berlin's downtown.  The site is actually the remnants of the Luna-Lager Labour Camp, the second largest labour camp in Berlin, but hold on for the whole story of the site.

The original site has, at the same time, a quaint and terrible history, which dates back beyond 1750.

In 1751, the Prussian Queen, Elisabeth Christine (Wife of Frederick the Great), had fruit trees and pathways created through this Heide (moor or heathland).  For much of the next 100 years the area became popular with local Berliners as an escape from the busy city to enjoy a quieter pace in nature.

To get enough light in many of these shots, Kris was having to use long exposure (20-30 sec) shots.

Here I am accidentally walking into one

Then we started playing around with it

We also had some fun using our headlamps to accentuate some of the cool features in the bunker, like these water valves and pipes next to the chimney.

By 1900, the area included several health resorts, recreational fields and courts and a toboggan hill. In 1930, a theme park was opened here (Traumland = Dreamland), complete with a Ferris wheel and rollercoaster. At the start of the war, the area became a forced labour camp, mainly for Polish, French, Belgian, Croatian, Serbian and Soviets, who were forced to make weapons for the Nazi war effort.

The 2,500 'employees' were forced to work 12 hr days, 6 days per week.  The most common fate of the workers was death, due to malnutrition, disease or from bombing raids, as they were offered no protection. Over the 3 years it operated, more than 100 prisoners died at the camp (I suspect it's likely that others were sent to a concentration camp before death, when they became too weak to be productive).

There were originally three bunkers on this site.  Two others were demolished by explosives.  It is unclear why this one was spared. The original front doors, and few windows / hatches have all been sealed up, but there is one window through which we climbed to get inside. The inside has been extensively gutted, and what little remained has been wrecked.  The structure itself seems sound, but as  you can see from the photos and video posted below, there is little else that remains beside some of the water / radiator heater pipes.

This is the view down the length of the bunker.  It gives you a very good sense of how little there is still intact.

Near the 'front' door (far away from where we entered) is one of the old boiler tanks

Again playing with our headlamp light to make some cool pictures.  In this one we shone on the steel doorway, and concrete pipe nearby. Below we shone the headlamps more evenly over the entire corridor.

This is the outside of the bunker

It's surprising how hidden in plain sight it actually is!

I also took a video walking around the bunker, which you can see here:

https://youtu.be/wIy4lKGbSe0

This was quite simply the easiest of the four places to get into.  There were no gates or fences, and being in a wooded park, very few people around to even worry if we were seen (it's quite unclear where on the list of legal or otherwise this sort of activity falls).  One of the access hatches at the back had no cover on it, and with the help of a convenient water pipe nearby, you could just swing yourself down into the bunker.

We spent a fair bit of time here, getting longer exposure shots, and at one point nearly had company, a group of 3 or 4 people who came to the entrance.  Owing to the obscure rules around us being in there, we just 'went dark', turned off our lights, and sat silently away from the entrance hatch.  The group of people just looked in, but didn't come in, and didn't see us, then continued on their merry way. While we were exploring it, I think more than anything else, I was left questioning what purpose did this bunker serve?  Why was it the only thing left on this site?  This being our first foray into abandoned places, I was also surprised by the tagging and relative destruction of the inside of the bunker, but this was probably the least damaged of the places we'd visit today.

Pankow Schwimmhalle

The second site that we visited was an abandoned swimming complex.  Apparently, Berlin has more abandoned swimming pools than operational ones.  The original building contained two pools, a small, shallower pool, and a full size (err.. half size?) deep pool for lap swimming, as well as a spa, and all of the office and changing facilities that go along with it.  I found it really interesting when it finally clicked as to how the buildings were originally set up.  Because the walls are completely demolished, it's sometimes hard to even tell where the front door is.  In this case, we had already wandered throughout the building before I figured out where the reception area was, and figured out which of the change rooms was which.  But once I had a point to start from, it became fairly clear where the patrons would enter, and travel through on their way to the pool.  I found myself wandering the same route, imagining what it would look like if it hadn't been wrecked so completely.  I could almost hear the sounds that would have accompanied all the people, the children and parents, walking or running around the pool deck.

This particular site has come up again and again for re-development or rehabilitation.  Originally built in 1971, it was operational until just after the wall fell.  In 1996, a new owner tried to refurbish it, but after opening in 2001, it closed a year later due to poor attendance.

I think this was the reception area.  Take note of the black and white caricature on the wall.  We see this artist again in the next place.

The diving blocks are still in place

Much more than in the bunker, we were able to see the different ways the original building had been constructed, and picture how it must have looked while it was open.

Women's bathroom and shower

And the men's bathroom and shower

This site might have actually been the hardest to get access to.  there are fences around the whole building (see two photos above), but in one spot, the fence isn't planed in the base, so it required just moving the fence to open a gap, then a little ducking and dodging around other barriers before we were inside the building.  Luckily it was on a pretty quiet street.

Güterbanhof Pankow

Stop 3 on our tour of broken down and forgotten places was a train turning station, located immediately adjacent to the Banhof station on the S-line. The site contained two turning tables, which could load, unload and re-arrange up to 1800 rail cars per day!

Originally opened around the turn of the last century, it operated until 1997.  It was used to turn train engines without the use of reverse, and to re-sort the rail cars into their final order.  Today it is a hollow shell of it's original glory.  We didn't actually see the outside turning station.  The building is one of only two remaining round houses built for this purpose, and as such, is listed as a culturally important building (like a heritage designation).  This significantly limits what any developer can do on the site, which on one hand, saves older buildings from being demolished, but on the other, lets them rot in place, till they will eventually have to be torn down for safety reasons, or are burned down from fires set during parties that happen within.

I don't know if you can even call this trespassing, the only 'barrier' we encountered to this site, was a gate that was wide open.  Once through that, it was a roadway that led straight to the front doors, and into the building.  It almost takes away some of the fun (but not really).

I think I liked this building the most of the four we visited today.  It is still so recognizable for what it's original purpose was.  Apparently the tracks to the building have now been taken up, but inside, it's pretty easy to see where the trains would enter, how they would be stacked and  sorted, and even the mechanism used to turn these giant, fully loaded cars towards the right bay.

I'm pretty sure this was the heating / boiler system.  Surprisingly intact, when compared to the last two places.

This is the control for the turning table.  The gears and everything are still here, though I think it would be very hard to ever imagine this turning again.

A huge overhead crane spanning two bays.  I suspect it was used for repairs.

In some places, nature is starting to reclaim.  This is right below one of the several (as you can see) open areas of the roof, so a fair bit of water, and sunshine is reaching the floor, and  encouraging some small trees to take root.

At the back end of the building were a number of small rooms, probably storage of parts, washrooms, and other such spaces.  These actually looked much more like the next stop than when you turned around and looked back at the rest of the building.

I think my favourite part was when you are able to single out some of the more unique spray paint artists and taggers.   This guy was one of my favourites (remember the artist from the swim hall).  I think i'm going to print this picture off and keep it at home.

I was amazed at this painting.  I couldn't make the words look that good generally, let alone give them the appearance of peeling off.  I liked this kind of graffitti.  I wasn't as wild about people just painting their symbol on everything.

I don't know if it's quite motivational, but it actually made me pause for a moment and ponder.

The spray paint continues all the way up to the top of the smoke stack.

Literally located right beside the train tracks.

This is the view from the platform of the S-train station next door.

Säuglings-Kinderkrankenhaus

This was the last stop on our tour of derelict places (gotta love the Germans for their compound words). It is a former childrens hospital and maternity hospital on the same site, but occupying different buildings. Compared to the last two buildings, this one is really in an advanced state of disrepair.  Apparently in 2013 alone it was set on fire 17 times.  

When the building was first opened in 1911 as the first municipal children's hospital in Prussia, it was considered one of the best of its kind anywhere in the world.  It was needed to stop the rising infant mortality rates at the time.  One of the most unique features of the site was it used to have a fully functioning dairy, including the cows and processing machinery.Numerous buildings and additions were made over the years, the last in 1987, but the hospital was shut down in 1997.

There have been two attempts to revive the site. The most recent was in 2005, when the site was purchased by a group of Russian investors.  They made big promises for what they would do to the site including making it a world class cancer treatment centre, but it seems they really just planned to let it go on decaying. The city rescinded the sale in 2013, adding more than €5 million in fines and charges.  Not that those fines have done anything to change the fate of the crumbling building.

This is the largest of the three buildings. You can see the bear of Berlin near the top.

The majority of the building that wasn't burned down looked like this

Heavily damaged and pretty much completely beyond repair.

But sometimes you found little markers to the original purpose of the building ... this switch is labelled "Station A: Please sound".  Probably for a bell or signal system.

This is the base of a paper towel holder with instructions to load the towels still legible on the back, and surprisingly, not tagged over.

Outside the ground floor rooms, walk-out access to the natural area.

A strange way to see all neighbouring rooms at once.  This passes through 10 or 12 rooms in a row, and can be seen directly from the 'reception' area or where I suspect the head nurse would sit.

We also started noticing the same artist tagging in different locations.  I mentioned the white fox guy, but this artist was also pretty common to see.

And more (?de-?)motivational phrases

Just one more area of the first building that has been set on fire.

Kristin spotted this and told me about the 'plague masks' (as these were known by), which were worn by doctors during the Bubonic Plague in Europe.  The long nose was stuffed with herbs to prevent transmission of the disease, at the time believed to be spread through the air via a 'miasma'.

Someone has come into the children's hospital section and re-painted all of the walls, ceilings, and floors of many of the rooms into themes.  It's wonderfully creative, but sad at the same time, as no child will ever see this room.

Even the pipes in this room were decorated to look like carrots.

A look through several of the rooms at once.

Mouse!

This one reminded Kris of a particularly spooky Doctor Who episode

Much more than any of the other places we visited, this place was teeming with people.  We had only 'heard' the one other group at the bunker, but seen no one since.  We saw probably 40-50 people walking through this massive site.  We ended up stopping to talk with two girls in the children's hospital for between 30 and 45 minutes, about all the things strangers in a strange place talk about, including our impressions of Germany, and their thoughts and beliefs about Canada and Canadians. They were probably in the late teens or early 20's but with an impressive ability to speak in English. Once again, our language education seems to pale in comparison.  It was one of my favourite parts of this explore, was talking and sharing our culture and experiences with them.  I didn't expect it to happen inside a burned out shell of a children's hospital, but sometimes you go with the flow.

A plug socket melted by the fires.

Kris was much better at spotting this than I was, but everywhere we were able to find that someone had painted a swastika (i.e. on the baby's forehead, and cheek), someone had come by behind them and crossed it out...

...Often leaving behind a note like the one below:

... which reads "you have lost the war".

As our walking tour guide pointed out the previous day, the fight in Germany continues to this day to neither forget, nor commemorate the history of the Nazis, and their campaign of terror and hatred. It's chilling when we hear how some of the current politicians campaign for closed borders, and a fear of 'the other', the one who doesn't look like us, or talk like us, that, while it's a long way to go to end up where the Nazis operated, it's the same starting point.

The children's hospital had a door facing right onto the roadway, so this site was quite easy to find.

A few short videos of our walkthrough the various buildings:

https://youtu.be/yzmWny_7Ego

https://youtu.be/DpfCpmTEVxE

https://youtu.be/Xap5rUvjkdY

I'm going to end this post here, as we have tons of photos and believe it or not, our day contained even more interesting stops, so we'll add those to another post.