On a nice Sunday, you can run into all sorts of people wandering and biking around these abandoned sheds. And yet this former barracks complex in the East German countryside is in good shape, considering that the military moved out around the time the wall came down. The bright paint is impressive, as is the attention to style and details in the sparse decor. It looks pretty ready to be turned into a rollerskating rink, with Sputnik tunes and polyester
“The stones here speak to me, and I know their mute language. Also, they seem deeply to feel what I think. So a broken column of the old Roman times, an old tower of Lombardy, a weather-beaten Gothic piece of a pillar understands me well. But I am a ruin myself, wandering among ruins.” The words of Heinrich Heine, a 19th century German Romantic poet after whom this hotel in the East German countryside was named. The Heinrich Heine Hotel was demolished in 2016 to make way for another
This vacant spa in former East Germany is as ready as ever to serve astute philosophers. Lie back, close your eyes, and let the Unterwassermassage take you somewhere Beyond Good and Evil. Who knows what you'll come up with next if you ever come up again?
This is definitely what I would want to wake up to as a child with a life-threatening illness in this cheery old ward. How consoling it is to think that if you make it, some day you might have a family that is just as adorable and wholesome as those dolls. All the better if one of those dolls starts speaking to you after a week or two of lying there in a drugged stupor, for surely it has great advice. Although if it contains the words "die", "choke" or "kill", you might just be better
This art was lovely to stumble across in the rear ward of an old decaying hospital.
In the attic of a former tuberculosis hospital, a torn strip of wallpaper reveals a little boy. And so the ghost story begins.
In this formerly communist-run hospital, a soldier guards a dilapidated fuse box. It's unclear whose side he's on; maybe he's just trying to protect himself from falling paint chips. In the meantime, a power outlet has been conquered further down the hall. But an even more subtle infiltration can be seen in the outer territories of the soldier's post. The drawings around the windows at first blend in like intricately textured
Explorations and ruminations about time capsules near and far, with an eye towards the structures, textures and playgrounds of decay. A companion blog for darkpassage.com.