My new favorite term: URBEX.
Urban exploration, the "clandestine visiting, photographing and filming of abandoned buildings in and around Berlin." I urbexed on Tuesday with new friends at the abandoned Sanitorium in Beelitz-Heilstätten, where Hitler stayed during WWI. It was a great photo day for me, a much-needed photo day, with plenty of "eye-candy" all around. Collapsed ceilings and roofs letting in bits of sunlight, peeling paint and wallpaper, underground tunnels, that dank, damp smell of decomposition and neglect. I love these spaces! It's such a strange wonder to be walking around abandoned buildings, photographing. Anywhere else in the world and I'd be worried about who might be lurking in the shadows, ready to attack. Here in Berlin, lurking in the shadows is probably someone just like me. Or a graffiti or conceptual artist, working on an incredible installation. Or a mother and daughter pair out for an afternoon stroll. The underground tunnel system was padlocked due to a fatality last year, and you definitely had to tread lightly going through some of the structures with caved in roofs, but we made it through the grounds safe and sound and with many wonderful photographs made.