Normally on Easter Sunday one spends time his or her family, however on this particular Easter a friend and I decided to wake up early and do some Urban Exploration.

What is great about living in Germany is that there are several abandoned buildings to explore.  It seems Germans tend to leave buildings standing when they are no longer in use, which allows one to have some interesting adventures.

Our first choice of places to enter ended up not working out.  There was too much security at Düsseldorf’s Glasshütte and it did not make sense going into a place that was being patrolled. 

So we decided to visit the Hermes Paper Factory/Recycling Center instead.  The Hermes site is located near Düsseldorf’s Medienhafen.  The factory was relocated there in 1911.  In 2008, the factory filled for bankruptcy. 

The site itself consists of four buildings.  We entered through the factory in order to avoid too much attention.  The factory / recycling center consists of two very large buildings that are connected to each other.  Upon entering the building I was really excited because it was full of amazing graffiti done by some well-known local artists! We spent several hours walking around the various levels of the factory itself.  We did come across one man who was sleeping in the factory, but we did not wake him up.

After about an hour or so we went into the office building.  This building was quite interesting.  It consisted of several floors with different offices.  The offices were completely trashed with some of the old furniture and files cluttering the floor.  One could also tell that people had been utilizing this building as a home.  However, we did not run into anyone in this building.  It too was filled with amazing graffiti.  The top floor seemed to be burnt out, and not worth going into. 

We did not go into the fourth building because my friend told me that the last time he was there he did see people living in it.  Since we had our photography equipment with us we did not want to risk a run in with some squatter.  However, I do want to go back and go into this building.  Just the like the office building we entered you can could see that this building was also very historic in its design.  So, I am curious to see how it looks.

We did however; go back into the factory to explore some more.  I think we spent at total of almost four hours at the site.  What I enjoyed about the site is that each part has different look and feel.  Many parts are extremely dark, while other places are really well lit.  Like any building you have to be very careful here.  There are lots of wholes in the floor and one could easily get hurt if he or she is not paying attention. Also there is a lot of debris and glass on the ground which again could lead to possible injuries if not paying attention.  In fact, my friend almost brushed his camera lens against some barbwire.  Luckily his lens was ok!

My friend and I enjoyed our Easter Sunday exploring the catacombs of this abandoned factory.  It seemed like a “Lost Playground” for artists and urban explorers to discover.  We followed the motto “TAKE PICTURES, LEAVE FOOTPRINTS!”  I look forward to revisiting this site to see how it has evolved in a month or two.