How I got into urbexing

Beginnings

As Helen Fisher found in her study of human character and how it relates to friendship and love*, there are four very distinct types of personality, depending on which hormone prevails in one's organism. “Builders” for example, those who's major hormone is serotonin, prefer to live their life in a cautious way, avoiding risk, staying in a well ordered scheme they devised for their lives, meticulously obeying all the rules and social standards. These kind of people, if they see an abandoned building or a hole in a fence, won't go inside, no matter how interesting it may look, because, well, they know they're not supposed to. But then there's another kind of people, those who are fueled by dopamine, those who will say gleefully “Curiosity killed the cat”… and then laugh and jump inside right away. They're called “Explorers” and, You've guessed it, I'm one of them :-D

Therefore I've always been lured by mysterious crannies, and if I saw an empty building or bunker with moss and graffiti on the walls, I would walk inside. But until recently this thing in my life didn't have a name, it wasn't like a hobby that I would embark on doing intentionally. It was just something that I would do on the spur of the moment, when I was on a walk and the opportunity turned up itself.

The change happened last autumn, but to fully understand it, we need to trace it back a year before, to October 2015, when I just started uni in Warsaw. One day I was coming back from a climbing wall, and in a park I see this huge building covered with graffiti, hidden between trees, behind a fence, which just happened to have a section torn off, making it trivial to walk inside. As it later turned out, it was and abandoned pool. Back at the time I think I haven't even explored it far enough to see the part with slides and dried out swimming pools – there were some people in there already, and I was too ashamed and tried to avoid them. But I was captivated by the charm of the place, and it stayed at the back of my head since then. I came back two or three more times in the winter and explored further. Then, in spring, I wanted to make a juggling video that would celebrate the completion of my second year of juggling. I needed a calm place to record, where I wouldn't be embarrassed by people seeing me try to record hardcore tricks and fail. The lost pool quickly popped in my head. Thus, for the next month, I came to the place pretty much every day, and in the end I turned the video into a show reel not just about my juggling, but also of all the interesting crannies in the place. I'm quite proud of the result, check it out here:

Now, one day I was coming back after recording, and I meet a friend. He asks me why am I carrying a tripod, so I tell him about my video project and about this epic place I'm recording in. And he told me, that if like such places, then he heard about an abandoned gasworks in Warsaw, that's reportedly an epic sight.

Soon I figured out which building it was, and I had it on the back of my mind to check it out, but for a few months I never actually got around to it. Also in the meantime I overheard a conversation in a train that made me realize urban exploration is an actual thing with a name, that there are whole societies of people doing it… But still the months passed by without me doing any urbexing.

But it's really funny how one thing leads to another: one day in autumn I was knocked by a car (I wasn't careful enough on a bike, and the driver was in a hurry). Nothing serious, but the next weekend my arm still hurt. And it was during that time of my life, when I was slowly (all right, maybe more like quickly) transferring from being a beginner slackliner to being a pro slackliner, and I practiced every weekend. So when my arm hurt after this accident, and going on a line seemed like a painful idea, I was like “what am I supposed to do with the weekend now?”. The concept of finally visiting the gasworks quickly popped into my head, and I set off for a walk.

Inside of one of the gasworks buildings (unfortunately I don't have any pictures taken by myself, source: http://wojciechkuzma.pl/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/DSC_0104And8more_tonemapped-200x300.jpg). And it looks even more epic when seen in the middle of the night while standing on that hectic construction just below the roof.

But not every day in a human life is a victory. I walked up to a fence, saw the guards booth, people walking nearby (not that they were actually paying any attention to my scrutiny of the fence), tried to start climbing up inside once or twice, withdrew, and at the end I just funked :-( It's one thing to enter a place that's completely deserted, and the greatest threat can be some hobo having an abode there, quite another thing to break into a place that's guarded and fenced up, even if You don't mean harm but just want to sightsee.

For the next week I was demotivated, reading online stories of people who got inside with ease in bright daylight, some of them were caught by the guard but managed to get out of the situation quite smoothly, and there I was, engrossed in shame over my display of cowardice. And again the stream of events took on quite a hilarious path. Next Sunday was my birthday, and that weekend my mother was in Warsaw and she said she brought a small gift for me, I just needed to come up to the spot where she was hosted for the night. We had some trouble with communication that day, because my phone was broken, so it was only concluded late in the evening that I had to come then or not at all. I had already eaten a huge dinner downed with a fair portion of wine, so I was in a perfect state for going to bed, not for setting off to a different district of Warsaw in the middle of a snowy night… But I suddenly felt sorry for my mother to bring something deliberately and not be able to give it to me. So I set off. It was supposed to be a short expedition with a tram and back, but after I received the gift and walked back into the snowy night, I suddenly felt energized and mesmerized, and decided to walk back. My thoughts soon started to wander off to that gasworks building, it wasn't extremely off the path…

On the way I was passing by a cemetery and it looked beautiful in the snow and night lights. Obviously it was closed and guarded, but I decided I wanted to get inside. After some hesitation I mustered the courage to climb over, and I had a fascinating stroll, all the more thrilling due to it's illegality. It was a good psychological warm up before facing the real challenge, the one that had been keeping me upset for the whole week: the gasworks. Yes, I reached it that night (it was nearly 3 A.M. already), and although there was some hesitation involved, eventually I climbed inside. Actually, as an afterthought I can tell that exploring the place proved astonishingly easy. Even though I accidentally made a bit of noise a few times, and climbing up the stairs inside of one of the cylindrical buildings meant being really close to the guards booth, I came out totally unharmed and unspotted. Oh, but I came out entranced! There's no words to describe just how mighty do the buildings look from inside, one would just have to be there. It was the first deliberate urban exploration I did (and the first that involved avoiding guards), and it totally made me want more!

Second phase – building a team

The same week I also had another adventure, not actually urbex but it involved even more sneaking in and avoiding the security, and together with the gasworks exploration it made me realize, that doing such things is possible and actually not super hard. I told about these adventures to my friend, and he was interested enough to be wanting to join me on some other exploration. I searched for deserted buildings in Warsaw and proposed to sightsee an abandoned tenement. For him it was quite a big step out of the comfort zone, but encouraged by my enthusiasm, we meticulously explored an entire building, discovering a huge assortment of interesting items, not just obvious things like a generous porn collection or empty beer bottles, but also memories after past tenants: someone's sailing license, school notebooks from over 30 years ago, and even an old edition of Resnick-Halliday-Walker (“Fundamentals of Physics”, a physics bible for ambitious high school students), which was a revelation for us, since we both study physics! There were also some creepy moments: once we were startled by a homeless guy (who was also afraid cause he thought we were cops) and in one room at the attic we found actual human bones (their origin remains a very sinister mystery, my friend was afraid to even admit that they were human, until we were safely away from the building).

Another fascinating and kinda creepy thing we found in that tenement

Despite the creepiness of finding human bones, the overall impression left on my friend was very positive, and some time later we set off for another exploration, inviting yet another friend to join. I definitely didn't want the group to grow too big, but 3 people still sounded all right. This time the goal was a former concrete plant. The experience was quite different than the tenement, we discovered fewer interesting items, but a lot of interesting rooms and passages. I also had a very scary accident while I tried to reach a room through a funnel-shaped hole in a ceiling and got stuck, unable to move, flailing my legs in nothingness below, and my friends were behind the wall. Luckily, after a few seconds (which felt more like a minute) of desperately wriggling and cursing, I managed to get through the bottleneck and fell four meters below. But overall the exploration went great! Except we were a bit annoyed with this new friend that joined us when he started randomly breaking glass just for fun. It is very important to emphasize, that this was very much against the idea of urban exploration! We are meant to discover an amazing place, not to ruin it further! Just because we technically break into a building, it doesn't entitle us to devastating or stealing, we ought to give a place some respect. I mean, it's okay to play a bit, and if something breaks by accident, it's acceptable, but I abhor deliberate destruction of abandoned buildings.

Lying in a pool of styrofoam we found in that concrete plant

Raising from the pool of styrofoam

Fortunately, we managed to convince our new friend, that it's not okay to break glass items for fun. Therefore he stayed in a team, which was later joined by another two people, and in this group of uni friends we had other epic explorations: a heating plant and another tenement. The former, with it's two rusty chimneys, was suggested to me by a fellow slackliner, as a potential highline spot, which sparked the most epic project I've ever done…

In the heating plant we didn't find human bones, but we found a dead bird

During the other tenement exploration I did with my friends we found a bunch of toys and made this wonderful piece of urbex art.

You can find all sorts of things in abandoned buildings :P

On the subject of chimneys (in general)

For people who like being high in a very literal sense, there is a quality in chimneys rarely met elsewhere. While being on top of the chimney one gets a unique 360 degree view on the surroundings below, totally unobstructed. It can somewhat be compared to a view from a highline, but the experience is different, especially that one is usually sitting on the edge of the chimney, not attached to anything. Also climbing the chimney is a very thrilling and spiritual experience in itself, even if there is a very firm ladder, the awareness that letting go off your hands just for a tiny moment would imply a deadly fall pushes a huge dose of adrenaline into veins, making the whole body tense and putting the mind in a hyperalert state.

My first chimney higher than a few meters was one that we passed by on the way to that first tenement I explored with my friend, it was the height of a five story building. Actually this was low enough that I didn't realize I was high until I reached the top. The next one, a few months later was one of the two in this heating plant already mentioned. Now this was more serious business. Although the ladder was covered from behind which was somewhat comforting, it was also over 40 meters high! From the top there was a view on the whole Warsaw and neighboring villages! Even though I saw that the other chimney was only about 15 meters away, when I asked myself if is it worth the bother to rig a highline between them, the answer was: Definitely! But we'll get back to that later.

First time on top of a 40 m chimney. At first super scary, but once I put on a harness and clipped in to a ladder I even durst to stand up on the top.

View from the top of the chimney, on all of Warsaw

Because before this project I had my most epic chimney climb yet: a huge brick chimney in Poznań which was almost surely over 80 meters high! It was connected with a more serious urbex: coming at night, climbing over fences, avoiding guards… And the climb was super sketchy, I remember every section of the ladder. It was only covered from behind on the very first section, higher on it became completely exposed. As the height grew, the ladder rungs became thinner and rustier, two or three had already fallen, so I had to test each one before hanging on to it. Now, on the very ending (therefore already over 70 m high), there was some huge metal thing hanging on one rung and obstructing the way, so I had to very cautiously bypass it. And finally the last few meters of the ladder were slightly overhang. Wow! Never before did I have to defeat the fear of heights that strongly. But I reached the top, admire the view over the city, and climbed down neatly, except for accidentally knocking down one brick.

Chimney in Poznań, over 80 m high for sure, with a super sketchy ladder

View from the top of this epic chimney 

And only two weeks later did the time come to come back to this heating plant near Warsaw and rig THE highline. The project went super smooth, nobody prevented us from setting it up and walking, I sent the line on sight, and the chimneys proved to hold during the leashfalls. We even got some epic drone footage, that made for a great icing on the cake of a Youtube video “Urbex juggling”, which I reocrded during a few of my urbex adventures.

More recently I did another chimney climb in my hometown Bielsko-Biała. The climb itself was quite ordinary (the ladder was exposed but very firm) but what made it unique was an accidental discovery: I took a picture with a flash of the inside of the chimney, and on the picture I saw that there is a ladder leading INSIDE. This enabled me climbing down into the middle of the chimney. Sometimes while on the ladder inside I would switch off my headlamp for the exhilarating experience of a climb while engulfed in pitch darkness :-)

View from the chimney in Bielsko-Biała

Taking a picture inside and discovering the ladder leading down into the heart of the chimney

But a more scary bit of this exploration was when I entered an adjacent building of an abandoned vodka factory, only accessible by a broken window on the first floor level. It was quite huge and I walked around undisturbed, until… I heard some noises. I now suspect they were caused by the wind, but at the time I was startled. I dimmed my headlamp, but kept on exploring, until I entered one room, where I suddenly stopped as I saw a human figure just a few meters in front of me! Now, I kinda ran away, so I don't know if it was an actual human figure and I actually doubt it, but my heart really jumped. And if it was, just who the heck was it? A deaf (or possibly dead) homeless person? A dummy? A ghost? Because if it was a human who heard me, how come he not have gone out sooner and asked who the hell was I, it's not like I was super quiet in there… So maybe I went paranoid because I was there all on my own, but honestly, the resemblance to a human figure was very strong.

Urbex swag: found some nice sunglasses

Probably the coolest finding of that night

What next?

Now that I've already done a fair bit of all sorts of urban explorations, can I bring this hobby to a new level? I don't know, but I'm definitely trying. The thrill of climbing chimneys made me ask: what else can I climb? This is how one day I ended up sneaking into construction site with my friend and climbing up the top of a crane.

Celebrating successfully reaching the top of the crane, unspotted by the guard

My friend taking his first lesson as a crane operator: discovering that the operator's booth was open was one hell of a surprise

And just two weeks ago while on a mountain trip I climbed the tower of a chairlift in a ski resort (which was obviously closed as it was in the middle of the summer) and then after some battling with the thoughts of “What if I won't be able to get back?” I descended into a SEAT of the chairlift. Just imagine the thing shaking while You're climbing down into it! Getting back was indeed scary, but actually quite easy.

Taking a rest on a ski resort chairlift seat... in the middle of the summer!

Although I haven't explored too much during this summer (and recently when I tried to explore something I saw while going on a bike I came really close to being caught by the police) I definitely want to explore more in the future, and also to do more projects like the chimney highline. So, if you have anything on your mind and would like to carry out such a project (or just some exploration) together, please contact me :-)

Picture from the chimney highline action: isn't it epic and totally worth all the risk? ;-)

* "Why him? Why her? Finding Real Love by Understanding Your Personality Type" - I don't normally read such stuff but this book was recommended to me by a friend and I can say that it is the best piece of psychological work I've ever heard of - it really shed a new light onto understanding why humans behave the way they do. Please be aware that the reference to "Builders" and "Explorers" I'm making here gives a very simplified picture, it also doesn't mention "Directors" and "Negotiators" - to really understand it better read the book.