Templin, Vogelsang, and what the soldiers left behind

Our next stop was Templin, where flowers were blooming and people rode to and fro on their bicycles. Where Wittenberge was limping along, little Templin skipped ahead.

We didn’t come to see Templin, however, but to use it as our base for exploring another base - the one at Vogelsang. The Russian army had a base here for almost 50 years, housing up to 15,000 troops. It was the third largest Russian base in East Germany. 

To get somewhere 'off the beaten path' you have to stop and ask directions. The army base was more like 'off the barely visible trail of footprints and broken sticks that leads you into a woods you might never find your way out of'. If you wanted to keep your place secret, this would be a good location.

This is the entrance to the base road

To get there, we took a train about 15 minutes from Templin and got off at Vogelsang, a place so small you have to push a ‘stop’ button on the train to get off, like you would on a city bus. Then we walked into a path in the forest, found the old road heading to the base, and hiked about 30 minutes in. It’s not illegal to go there, but no one is out front selling tickets, either. It didn’t take long to find the traces of the old base – a guard station, barracks, a school, a cafeteria, garages, showers, even an underground bunker. 

In the school

In the school

Barracks

The base was self-contained, so the soldiers didn't leave and the Germans didn't come in. It housed tank regiments. And in 1959, twelve nuclear weapons were stored here, pointed at various European targets. When the Russians left this place in 1994, they took everything that could be carried, including weapons and furniture and lighting fixtures. What’s left now are the shells of buildings themselves, with peeling paint and rotten floors and windows broken by 20 years of visitors before us. If you want to know more about how the base was used, this BBC article is worth reading, and has a short video too.

An underground bunker

Russian newspaper insulation

In the soldiers' canteen

It was hard to shake the feeling that the Stasi (East German secret police) might pop out from behind a corner and ask for our papers and drag us off to be interrogated somewhere. Of course that couldn’t happen, there are no Stasi spying on people anymore. Now it’s just Americans who are spying on Germans instead.

This part of the trip was, as you may have guessed, Brian’s idea. But I liked it. I felt like we were uncovering a past civilization. Of course it was only 20 years ago that the place was abandoned. But as you can see from the photos, nature doesn’t need long to take over again. 

Power station