Last summer I went to Berlin for a week where I visited lots of interesting locations including the abandoned amusement park Spreepark. The park, then called “Kulturpark Plänterwald”, was opened in 1969 because east Germany wanted to have an amusement park just like the west (there they had Phantasialand in Brühl). The park had a lot of visitors, around 1.5 million, but then all changed in 1999 when they got into a quarrel with the local government about the size of the park, the parking space and the busy roads because of the park. In 2001 the park only had 400.000 visitors and shortly afterwards closed down because it went bankrupt. The owner of the park tried to ship 6 attractions to Lima for “repairs” but in reality he hid 180 kg of cocaine in the attractions and he was arrested. The park closed down and was abandoned since 2002. The German bank sold half of the attractions but the remaining attractions are still there and are now being taken over by nature.

You can’t just walk into the park to have a look because security is guarding the place, but because of all the people that were illegally trying to get in they’ve now arranged some ways to get into the park. One of the old train attractions is working again and for a few euros you can take a ride around the park. Another way to get in is to go an organized tour, that’s what we did. The tour was in German and the guy was speaking very fast so I didn’t understand a lot of it.. But that was not really a problem because the main reason we want to get in was to see the place and make photos. It was a really spooky place. Apart from the group we were in it was very quiet with in the background a screeching noise of the old ferris wheel which was pushed around by the wind. I made a short movie of it, you can view it here.

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Halloween @ De Bakkerij, Castricum
More photos can be seen here.

Another one from the pokershoot.

See previous post for more information about the place.

Last summer I have visited Berlin and Niedenstein (near Kassel). On our way from Berlin to Kassel we visited Beelitz Heilstatten, a ghost town with decaying hospital buildings. Although I have seen some photos of it on the internet beforehand, the place really has changed over the years. Various buildings were collapsed, rotten, and some ceilings were coming down. It was unsafe to use the stairs to get to the higher floors since the wood was rotten and the concrete was breaking down. Yet, some buildings were quite safe to enter and the front doors were left open so it wasn’t really hard to get in (like some of the stories on internet said). Most of the bigger buildings were closed as they were restoring them (after all these years..).

It was really a spooky place; most of the machinery was removed or moved to one of the restored building even though still some machines were in their original places. Walking between the buildings, you had to look because all the buildings are connected by a cellar-complex and there are a lot of open cellar holes hidden in overgrown paths.

History from Wikipedia:
Beelitz-Heilstätten, a district of the town, is home to a large hospital complex of about 60 buildings including a cogeneration plant erected from 1898 on according to plans of architect Heino Schmieden. Originally designed as a sanatorium by the Berlin workers’ health insurance corporation, the complex from the beginning of World War I on was a military hospital of the Imperial German Army. During October and November 1916, Adolf Hitler recuperated at Beelitz-Heilstätten after being wounded in the leg at the Battle of the Somme. In 1945, Beelitz-Heilstätten was occupied by Soviet forces, and the complex remained a Soviet military hospital until 1995, well after the German reunification. In December 1990 Erich Honecker was admitted to Beelitz-Heilstätten after being forced to resign as the head of the East German government.

Following the Soviet withdrawal, attempts were made to privatize the complex, but they were not entirely successful. Some sections of the hospital remain in operation as a neurological rehabilitation center and as a center for research and care for victims of Parkinsons disease. The remainder of the complex, including the surgery, the psychiatric ward, and a rifle range, was abandoned in 2000. As of 2007, none of the abandoned hospital buildings or the surrounding area were secured, giving the area the feel of a ghost town. This has made Beelitz-Heilstätten a destination for curious visitors and a film set for movies like The Pianist from 2002 and Valkyrie from 2008.