Aidan Dunbar

I’ve been meaning to write about Spreepark for quite a while now, but every time I would be sidetracked by something more immediate.

Closed around 2002 due to massive debt issues the theme park occupies a considerable amount of ground in the Plänterwald district of Berlin ten or fifteen minutes or so walk straight over the road from the metro train station, past what I think was a school on the left.

The last day of the Berlin trip was free, and in the bar the night before we decided we would use the time to explore a theme park that James mentioned in passing the night before. A quick search on Google brought up Spreepark, so off we went early the next morning in the frigid air and the snow to see what it had in store for us.

Getting in was only complicated by the snow - wet and cold if you went through the hole under the fence, hard and slippery if you went over the gate. We did a combination of the both, and were immediately amazed by what we saw. Inches and inches of untouched snow covered dozens of almost pristine rides all sitting there waiting to be photographed.

First we headed for a log flume surrounded by a frozen pond, afterwards heading off to a brilliant roller-coaster ride just a little closer to the ferris wheel.

Snow covered roller-coaster cars sat on the rails and we had only just begun photographing on the raised metal walkway (where passengers would be loaded and unloaded from the cars) when a family of Germans rounded the corner below us. We got as low as we could and froze, hoping they wouldn’t see us.

They didn’t, or more likely they chose to ignore us, and after watching them disappear into the distance we got back to the job at hand. Inside the control booth was a multitude of switches and dials, some of them broken, a lot of it covered in graffiti which was a dream to photograph.

The rest of the park was just as impressive - creepy old animatronic mannequins lurking in the darkest corners of tumble-down shacks were a surprise to run across. The dinosaur park behind the ferris wheel was superb, old fibreglass triceratops heads littered the ground whilst the remaining models stood guard.

Alas, it was a shame we couldn’t get to the actual ferris wheel as it was surrounded by a pond, and the bridge had collapsed. The ice was probably strong enough to walk on, and indeed there were footprints in the snow indicating someone had done it recently but the photos wouldn’t have been worth the risk of falling through.

On the way out we ran into the family again, coming through the hole in the fence some 80 meters ahead of where they were walking outside of the fence. Not too bad for a morning’s work.

The snow really made this explore special, although it’s pretty hard to beat an abandoned theme park when it comes to epicness, except of course if you are a missile silo…

See what James has to say about the place. If you’ve been or are going, leave a link to your photos in the comments!