A strange UFO perches on a mountaintop in deepest darkest Bulgaria. Buzludzha, the country’s former communist party HQ, has to be seen to be believed.
Buzludzha!
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Iraqi embassy
They must have just left the Iraqi Embassy to the DDR with no notice. “We’re leaving. Pack your bags and get out!” The party at Saddam’s house was over.
Haus der Statistik
Haus der Statistik looms over Berlin’s Alexanderplatz with STOP WARS across its bow in big red letters. The DDR’s former statistics HQ is right to be angry.
SS Bakery
The SS Bakery only went bust when the Nazis did. They forced prisoners from nearby Sachsenhausen to make bread to keep other concentration camps going.
Garbáty Zigarettenfabrik
Garbáty’s Zigarettenfabrik was brought to its knees by Nazi persecution. East Germany appropriated the cigarette factory till that ended too.
Luna-Lager bunker
A wartime bunker is all that’s left of the former Luna-Lager labor camp at Schönholzer Heide, now a grassy, pretty wild and pleasant 35-hectare park.
The Berlin Wall’s escape
It was a “small sensation” to find 80 meters of the original Berlin Wall among a bunch of secretive trees that imagined they could keep it hidden forever.
Karlshorst
The Soviet military had its administration HQ in Karlshorst, near where Generelfeldmarschall Wilhelm Keitel signed the unconditional surrender of German troops.
Kinderheim Makarenko
Kinderheim Makarenko was the biggest children’s home in the DDR, where some 6,000 East Germans grew up without ever knowing where they came from.
Fighting City
The British built “Fighting City” so their soldiers could learn the subtle art of urban combat. It wasn’t abandoned for long before the police took over.
Volkspolizeikaserne Blankenburg
In the DDR’s final days, Volkspolizei and Stasi officers arrested protestors and brought them to this police barracks in Blankenburg to brutally beat them.