Blub: Where the rats won
Berlin is well-known for its alternative culture, its street art and its abandoned buildings. Blub, the abandoned waterpark originally built in 1985 is no exception. Originally attracting over 600,000 people annually and costing the equivalent of 22 million Euros to build, for Berliners growing up at the time, Blub was the park to visit.
Located in Britz, on the southern part of Neukölln, the now dilapidated facilities show evidence of hot tubs, water slides, wave pools, saunas. There was even some sort of man-made river flowing through the complex.
However, after German reunification in 1985, the Guardian reports that the number of annual visitors dropped and the park had to contend with a new kind of patron: rats.
Although I didn’t see any on my tour there, multiple sources describe the tourist attraction as being overrun by rats, their feces contaminating pools, changing rooms and saunas.
The owner of the facility attempted to bring in exterminators and pest control companies but the club’s reputation was already damaged. After a closure of a part of the park in 2002, the remaining sauna and spa was shut down permanently in 2005.
All 40,000 square feet of relaxation, leisure and fun were abandoned — given to the rats.
After multiple attempts to revive or repurpose the land had failed, a Munich-based investment firm, the H-group, bought the land and will demolish Blub, in order to build 450 luxury apartments later this year.
The Guardian writes on the new plan:
The new buildings will apparently feature “modern, inviting architecture for a wide variety of housing and living models” and spacious green areas to ensure “unique and premium open spaces for the future residents”
One can only hope the rats don’t go for that place too.
This story was originally published on my blog.
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