Part 2 - Disappointment Professional by the Pool in Denmark
In this blog and ongoing series, you can follow Abandoned Nordic's urbex road trip as we journey from Finland to France along a longer route. The trip will take about a month, and along the way, We are now traveling from Sweden to Denmark.
Our journey continues from Båstnäs towards Denmark and Copenhagen. We spend our last night in Sweden, near Gothenburg, this time at an official campsite. The experience is much more pleasant than expected, and I’m confident we can easily stick to our plan of camping for at least a third of the nights. The site is clean, quiet, and by a lake. And certainly not the least advantage: official campsites have showers.
A man with his dog camps in his van near our tent. As the sun sets over the lake, he sits in the doorway of his van, softly playing guitar to his beagle.
The next morning, Tuesday, July 2nd, after crossing the nearly eight-kilometer-long Øresund Bridge, we arrive in Copenhagen. We leave the car on the outskirts of the city and take the metro downtown. We wander around, soaking up the atmosphere of the old town, and particularly enjoy the café at Grand Teatret, that is one of the oldest cinemas in Copenhagen, with a beautiful Art Deco design – it could only be improved if it were abandoned.
When we leave Copenhagen in the evening, we still have time before it gets dark, so we decide to check out our next photo location for the morning. It is always wise to do so if possible. If it turns out we can't access the place, we can drive further that evening.
Our location is an abandoned military area. We first drive to the main gate to assess the situation. We suspect there is surveillance, as automatic lights turn on when we approach the gate. If there is a camera here, it points directly at the gate, so climbing over it is not an option. However, when we drive to the back of this large area, it becomes immediately clear that we can enter unnoticed from there. Because it doesn’t get very dark at this time of year and at these latitudes, we decide to go in and photograph right away and find a place to sleep afterward.
This European road trip has been long in the planning, and our expectations have risen high. Because the early part of the journey involves long stretches of driving with only one photo location per day, it puts pressure on these locations to meet our expectations. This military area, where we are now planning to go, is one of the places I have high hopes for. Specifically, the area contains a gymnasium and an indoor swimming pool. We have seen abandoned pools before, and they are often not very exciting, but this one is different.
This particular pool was featured in the Danish-American Netflix series "The Rain," and the entire third season was filmed in this area. D-A-D filmed a music video here (link to the video at the end of this story) and also other artists have used the location for their music videos. The pool is incredible, with dense vegetation taking over the bottom and edges. Ferns frame the view beautifully, and vines hang from the diving platforms – perfect? Yes!
We park the car a bit further away, about a kilometer from the site. We weave through cows that roam the dirt road leading to the area, seemingly indifferent to us. We slip into the area and look out for surveillance cameras, but see nothing. We check the map and easily locate the right building.
We step into a relatively modern gymnasium; it is huge. We walk through large locker rooms towards where we expect the pool to be. The pool is right where we think it is, and we head through the doors. My expectations are sky-high, and now they come crashing down. Everything in the pool area is torn apart, with pallets, furniture, metal scraps, and plastic debris everywhere. Hoses, pipes, beer crates – all kinds of unbelievable trash. The vegetation is ripped up; I go to take a closer look as glass shards crunch under my feet. Suspiciously, the greenery is still vivid despite the destruction, and upon closer inspection, most of the vegetation is plastic. At its best, it was a set, which would be fine, but now that the set is destroyed, it looks doubly disgusting. The pool was picturesque in 2020, but four years is a long time in an area easily accessible to vandals.
I take a few photos, mainly for documentation; I'm certain I will never publish the pictures taken at the pool.. Kimmo is not as disappointed as I am, and the vast gymnasium with its various courts and other spaces is interesting to explore. But my expectations are so visual that the experience is negative for me. I take a picture in one large hall with gymnastic equipment and also some in locker rooms – their functional style and the dim, pale light from the skylights create an eerie combination. I would be excited about those photos maybe, but the state of the pool stings. Must everything beautiful be destroyed? I can’t understand what someone gets from wrecking places, and even if they do get something out of it, it’s surely not as much as multiple adventurers would get if the places were left intact and nature took its course.
After successfully leaving the area, I check my Instagram messages. I have uploaded a few stories from the site. An urbex photographer from Denmark welcomes us to the country and asks if we have encountered the site’s guard and his dog. Apparently, the dog is the one with less of a sense of humor and might roam the area freely. Luckily, we didn’t meet them.
It’s time to find accommodation, and we find a small campsite nearby – perfect. We set up the tent and eat some food we picked up on the way before the evening photo session. As night falls, an orange cat keeps us company.
We plan to continue our journey in the morning, with a couple of exciting places on the agenda: an abandoned castle and a lighthouse swallowed by sand dunes. Stay tuned.