About Arcanum

The hobby of urban exploring came to me by accident.

Until the summer of 2010, I hadn't even heard that such a thing exists. I had just begun having fun playing around with the camera on my iPhone, but abandoned buildings hadn't caught my eye yet.

My wife and I were visiting the "Viking Days", an exhibition event which was held on the site of an abandoned military station in Northern Germany. On the way back to the parking lot, I spotted an abandoned barrack and decided to "just take a quick peek".

That was the initial spark that got my urbex fire burning.

At first, I just took a few photos with my phone whenever we passed something abandoned, but after about one and a half years, that wasn't enough anymore and I started actively looking for places and trying to get my wife to go there with me.

She was a bit critical at first, but by the time we visited the sanatorium in Beelitz-Heilstätten in January of 2013, she was convinved, and now the two of us are on tour as much as we can, travelling through Germany and other countries looking for the unknown, checking background stories and finding the most beautiful places you can imagine.

For me, the history of the objects is essential to the hobby of urban exploration.

Every building has a story to tell, and only the knowledge of the story (or stories) makes the experience complete. Sometimes you find out something months or even years after your visit, but this new knowledge adds significant value to the experience you made all that time ago. And sometimes it makes you want to go back and experience the building again - only this time it will be different...