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Read more about our travels around the former DDR
The final stop on our tour was Wunsdorf, which during the DDR era was the largest Soviet base outside of the USSR. The Wunsdorf base is located to the south of Berlin and has been dubbed ‘The Forbidden City’, due to the fact that locals required permission to enter the area, and ‘Little Moscow’, as the area was home to around 75,000 men, women and children and had daily trains running to and from Moscow. We had intended to make our visit after leaving Berlin for Eisenhuttenstadt. However, as became abundantly clear, many services in Germany are closed on a Monday and the tour we had intended to take around the base was not available.
However, we did finally make it to Wunsdorf on the last day of our tour. When reading about the area before the visit it seemed as if we would be visiting an old abandoned military camp. However on arrival we were surprised to see that whilst much of the military base is fenced off and comprises dilapidated buildings, many of the bases features are now intertwined with a small town. Following the fall of the wall, the last Russian troops left Wunsdorf in 1994 and since then redevelopment of the area has started, with some of the old barracks reconstructed into residential units.
After passing through Wunsdorf we took a right on to Martin Luther Strasse. This is where you get your first glimpse of the old base. There are some rundown buildings fenced off on the right of the road. If you follow the road round to the left onto Zehrensdorfer Strasse until you get to the intersection with Zeppelinstrasse where you will find a restaurant, a military memorial shop and an information centre stacked with books. It is from here you can book a tour, though it is definitely best to book in advance if you can. Unfortunately we were flying home that day and the tour did not start until 2pm, so we were unable to make it.
However, there is still a fair bit you can see in the town without a tour guide, though through looking at others accounts of the area there is also much that you can’t see. Taking a walk around the town you can see many of the old bunker towers dotted around the town, which were built around the time of the Second World War. They were designed in such a way that if bombs were dropped on them they would likely bounce to the bottom of the structure, where the concrete was thickest and the explosion unlikely to breach the walls.
On Zehrensdorfer Strasse there is a restaurant called The Peking Garten, which whilst we cannot comment on the food, If you look across the car park and through the trees you will find the Officer’s House where one of two remaining statues of Lenin on the base can be found.
Depending on whether you’re going on the tour and also whether you have a penchant for trespassing, the fence that surrounds the area does have some weak points where you can gain access and have a look around some of the buildings unescorted.
Unfortunately due to not being able to go on the tour we were a bit limited in what we could see, though it was great to see what we did and may just mean another trip is required!
Loving this post on Wunsdorf? Read more about our Red Tourists road trip around the former DDR here.
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