There are so many “lost places” photographers, I needed to find my own niche.
I opted for lost places that are ruled by cats, like this empty villa in Guben, Germany.
Links:
- More cats.
- And if you are into lost places, check out the forgotten spa town, the mysterious Holy Ghost temples or the ghost town in the Atacama desert.
The Happy Hermit 
I find myself reading more of your blog and I think I miss travelling and witty (and intelligent) people like you. Hope you’re doing well. Xxx Ljiljana
If you make me blush, I cannot write!
I am still on the German-Polish border, capturing beautiful autumn photos, but spending more time in Poland after a run-in with German neo-Nazis yesterday. Those anti-refugee people are turning me into a refugee myself, in a way.
Well, I would have needed to go to Poland anyway, because in Germany the shops are closed for Sunday and I would starve. ;-)
I’ll be thinking of you when I’ll be sitting in a sunny and colorful park later! :*
❤️❤️❤️
First, you know cats rule wherever they happen to be… in their minds anyway😉
Second, is the villa in horrible disrepair? I always wonder when I see places that are empty and abandoned what the story is. What circumstances led to a home being abandoned? And why has no one reclaimed it?
It amazes me the we, the majority of decent people have to deal with the very vocal minority of right-wing nuts because we ARE decent and afford them rights like all people.
As Dr Martin Luther King said – “The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.”
Today, I even saw a cat that ruled over a derelict wool factory. And a super cute and playful one, too!
I didn’t dare to go inside this villa, because it’s quite centrally located and I would need to climb to the top floor to enter it. But to my untrained eye, it looks fine.
I wonder about the stories, too, especially with such grand and stylish buildings in the middle of the town. But here, in Eastern Germany, there has been so much depopulation that it’s not a rare sight. Whole castles are empty. (Photos coming soon!)
Depopulation here is due to low birth rates, closing of factories and the remaining young people moving away to university cities.
Guben, to take this town as an example, has lost 50% of its population since German reunification (which included a massive de-industrialization in the East).
Click to access Bev%C3%B6lkerungsentwicklung_Guben.pdf
This is Detroit-scale population decline.
Curiously enough, you can spot the difference as soon as you walk across the bridge into Gubin, the Polish half of the town. There is much more life, there are more shops, and there are many more children, young and middle-aged people. Also, couples there are holding hands instead of looking grumpily, so I think they will have even more children in the future.
Another fun fact to picture the situation: I am staying right next to the train station in Guben (on the German side), but because there are so few shops on the German side, it’s easier for me to walk into Poland to do my groceries there.
(But then, the German side has more funeral parlors. With Polish employees.)
If they’re both EU why don’t the Polish people spread out into the German part? Are laws and taxes THAT different?
It seems to me, judging by the cars parked in front of the houses, that some Poles are indeed living on the German side.
But then, Gubin (the Polish side) is not overcrowded, either, so there is no pressure to move.
As to laws, I could imagine that one issue is Germany’s compulsory school attendance. And Polish parents would probably prefer their children to attend a Polish school.
There are other legal differences, some better on this side, some better on the other. (For example, Polish women effectively have to travel to German to get an abortion.)
I think cultural and linguistic factors play are far greater role. People seem to like to use a medical system and government services in their own language, even if those may be objectively better elsewhere. Overall, I think the open borders within the European Union have been a great test, I think, and have shown that people don’t just calculate economic benefits and move to where wages are higher or rents are lower. There need to be extreme differences to do so. (Like for so-called unskilled labor or in the medical profession, where people can earn a multitude in other countries of what they earn at home.)