Anniversary’s are (I suppose) time for reflection.
I have tried in the past to pinpoint where my interest in history and urban exploration might have really started and I’ve never come to a satisfactory conclusion.
One of my earliest exploring memories was as a child living in Germany on a joint Bundeswehr/U.S. Army base in a town called Schwalmstadt.
Details of that trip in my brain are somewhat hazy, but I remember waking out into the woods with my father to see part of a training area where there was an old American tank that was used as a set piece. I think it was probably an old M60.
It was rusted, the hatch on top was stuck in the open position, and there were expended piles of blank rifle ammunition on and around it. I’m sure I climbed up on it because I remember looking down into the darkness of the crew compartment and wondering what might have been left behind inside it, but I wasn’t able to find out.
That particular base closed shortly after we left, with parts of it today being used as a business park, but many of the bunkers and areas that once housed munitions and equipment left to rot. That place where my interest in exploring probably started is now it’s self an abandonment.