Casino

Finally I had the time to visit the old Casino, near the Buda castle. The Casino has been closed for some 30 years now, and since one part of the land belongs to one district, and the other half to another, there's a neverending debate going on about who should fix it up, so nothing is done. It is left to decay. Also, it cannot be demolished, as it is (or well, once was) both part of the national heritage and is therefore protected building. Which is easy to understand, it could be really beautiful.

Getting in was certainly easy, but I won't give away my entry point. :) The trip was only a half success, as I got caught by security. Imagine, nobody's around, and just before you reach one of your goals, a head pops out of a door and asks you to leave. The guard was pretty cool, though.

Please excuse the image quality, the pictures were taken with my cellphone.

This is one of the doors I couldn't enter.

It appeared to have had a hotel part or something, if you look close, you can see a vacuum cleaner inside.

Again, this proves my hotel theory. Or they could also have been flats.

Camera - boo! I found this too late. But my humble guess is that it's either fake, or offline.
REAL cameras are usually not left bare, they are most of the time equipped with a case.

A cool graffiti

This used to be a phone booth's case. The note on the right used to say:
"Do not vandalise the phone - it could save a life!"

Pillars. Used to hold whatever. If anything.

Now this was interesting. I didn't quite get all the cobblestone and the rocks.
Later, the security guard told me the holes I had seen were remainders of archeological research, maybe these were also left there by the archeologists.

And finally, the view from there.

I will have to revisit the place once, as unfortunately I couldn't get inside. Tho I did find a place where supposedly I could enter, or two, but I'll have to check that later.

And I promise I'll grab a proper camera next time.

Tököl Airport & Barracks

The video about the second part of the previous post is finally ready.

Cyrillic graffitis reading "Kursk" and "Sasha", rubble, concrete and hangars, and a video here.

Bridge interior

Today while walking to work I noticed that the service door of the X Bridge of Budapest was wide open. Nobody was around, so I decided to sneak in for a glimpse. Here are two photos, taken with a phone, so please excuse the image quality.




I had to leave in a hurry, since I realised that a camera was looking straight at me, and so was an IR sensor, but hopefully these were disabled while maintenance was done. :)

Nagyvásártelep take 2 + Army base & airport

Today we decided to revisit a site, and show it to the others. We ended up having a great trip, tho, we were afraid about getting caught when sneaking in, because the demolition works near the place have advanced a lot, and there are 3× more workers on the spot. Some fresh pictures of the place (some are a courtesy of a fellow explorer from the crew, wanting to remain anonymous) :


And here's an picture of me posing in explorer swag :)


And finally a video I put together about the nagyvásártelep location:

After exploring the above location we moved on to the next planned place, a former army base. It used to serve multiple purposes, it had barracks, an airport, and of course training grounds. It is a huge area, and we just didn't have the time to explore the whole lot. We cruised by in the car and decided on a sexy looking building to explore. We parked the car nearby, and hopped the fences. First we were afraid of being caught by the guards, but we had to realize that nowadays the place is used for various civilian purposes. One building (out of the many) is used for paintball, the hangars are all sold or leased, and small planes are kept in them. The tarmacs are occasionally used for drag races, so it is far from what it used to be.

The first building we ran into was in a rather bad shape (as all others...), and it seemed it had been a victim of arsony, but when we went in it turned out that it was just simply painted black on the inside - for what reason, I don't know. It was really trashed and wasn't really interesting, so we decided to look for the building we spotted from the car.

However, we did manage to find a building that was somewhat "untouched", of course ruined, but it wasn't full of stupid graffitis. The way in seemed hard to find, since we didn't really have the chance to run around looking for an entrance - the place was full of amateur pilots and workers, and we didn't really want to be noticed.




After climbing in we found a good number of russian graffitis, probably painted by the soldiers who have left. We found a way downstairs, and hoped to get into the huge tunnel that connects the building with the adjacent one. Of course, no luck - for some reason they decided to seal the entrance... It was really disapponting. We climed back upstairs and checked out the little chimneys on the tunnel's top, and decided we wouldn't really be able to climb out, so we will have to bring a ladder or something next time. :)

By then it was already getting dark, and the place - being an airport - was just so huge that we couldn't really get to more buildings - or at least, we decided to turn back, as we didn't want to explore in the dark. So we left... Made our way back on the long unused rails, tackled the bushes and leftover barbed wire, and off we drove. I hope to revisit this place one day.

And to finish off, watch a video about the russian graffitis. I hope someone can sort them out for me!

I'm not dead!

Sorry for not updating for ages, I just want to assure everybody that I'm still alive. I didn't die from asbestos, didn't suffocate from ammonia, didn't get killed in the subways, fall down from heights... I just have very, very little time recently.

However, next week seems to be exciting - a little crew is forming for explorations, and our next stop might be the "Gas Factory". Check out some lovely photos on vegjatek.hu!

Former army base

On the way home today I have seen an old army base that seems worthy to check out one day. Guarded, but is completely empty - the base was closed due to the "reorganisation" of the Hungarian army.

North-Pest Hospital

Set somewhere in the deepest of the XVth district of Budapest is an old, abandoned hospital, with lots to explore.

One of my friends I explore with found this location browsing the net, to be exact here. Check the links to some photos posted by "ozzy" (entry #115 in the topic)!