After experiencing the Border arrest in Russia, Shap and I ended up in an insane asylum in Berlin. Before you ask, how can they get into this much trouble, let me explain. I set up a photo shoot with a photographer before I left the U.S. His specialty is abandon buildings. About forty minutes outside Berlin, is an abandon insane asylum that was built in the late nineteen- twentieth century by the Germans. When the Russians took over East Germany, they used them for offices, and a small section for the insane. Now they sit completely abandoned with no fence around them, areas of access with deer and wild hogs roaming around.

Nathan Wright, a Brit who came to Berlin for a 5-day visit and is still here after 8 years, specializes in photographing abandon buildings. He has been exploring these buildings all over the world. He definitely has an eye for creating the scene. Besides this, he is great at helping you with your camera settings.

We parked on the side of a road, headed off into a field, and then onto an overgrown pathway surrounded by a jungle of trees that must have been beautiful lawns at one time. The first place was easy to get into, as we went through a door and up a set of staircases. Most of the rooms have peeling sick-colored yellow paint that I figured was full of lead and was definitely painted during the Russian period.

Under the yuck-yellow paint, was a blue color left over from the Germans. I seriously think that there must have been some morbid person that sat in a factory and looked at paint chips that would drive people even more insane. Every wall and window sash was peeling double layers of paint. At one point I took a picture of a wall that looked like a waterfall of peeling paint.

The eerie atmosphere of the rooms, the dirt on the floors, the old bathtubs, and toilets, the rusted out washers and old belt dryers, abandoned pipes, broken chairs and old operating tables added to the ghostly empty feeling. Hallways extending the length of the building with old shoes, newspaper, and receipt books scattered here and there created incredible pictures. Five different buildings with low light was a challenge, but the light created some amazing pictures.

Typical of me, I arrive on the scene and my battery ran out. I was in Cuba with a wide-angle lens when I should have had a portrait lens; I am now at the beginning of the day without a battery. I was able to get a couple of great pictures before it completely died and then some with the iPhone; of course I had to borrow Shap’s because I left mine in the hotel. You can see how this day went. I did borrow Shap’s fixed 100-lens camera, which gave me some pause for a bit, but then the lens and I came to an understanding, and I enjoyed the rest of the day.

We troop around the various buildings going through some pretty iffy rooms,but the next shocker was from Nathan who says: “ Do you want to go down in this hole to the basement or climb in this first story window?” I look at the window and it looks like an accident waiting to happen for me. I can just envision my head on one side of the window and my ass hanging out the other. Since my knees don’t work that well anymore I figure there was no way I could rely on them to help. So off to the hole in the basement, where Shap hops down to the first level right into a cloud of bugs. At this point I decide that the best thing that I could do is stay outside. But Shap would not hear of it and so I dove into basement through the bugs and onto the floor. Then we had to duck down through basement pipes that were wrapped with asbestos and continued up a set of stairs that were shaky at best. Nathan kept saying not go anywhere unless he told us, as half the building was burned out and the floor was falling through. However, we did get some of the best photos at this location.

At some point our age came up with Nathan and his statement was “You are the oldest couple I have taken down through that hole in the basement.” Great, does that make us stupid or cool?

 

 

Just so you don’t think we were done with border guards and police on trains, I want you to know that on our way home on the S bahn, we got kicked off the train. The ticket Nazi came by and asked in German why we did not have out ticket punched. I understood what he said, but just kept saying in English, we don’t understand. Best line of defense is to act dumb and pretend you have no idea what is going on. Finally, he says “Get Off, get ticket punched. “ In all my great wisdom I advise Shap to ignore him and stay on the train, as it was slowing down. The ticket Nazi starts yelling at us from halfway down the car to get off. So we finally got off the train and he yelled for us to get out ticket punched. I kept saying where, where? He motioned to a small red box where we punched our ticket. How ridiculous was this? We had obviously bought the tickets, we had not scammed the system, so why we had to get off to punch our ticket, I have no idea, just another autocrat pulling his weight around. Shap and I survived another incident on the train, once again.

 

Last day in Berlin, on to Norway.