NSA listening station
The station is located in outskirts of West Berlin, It was built on a mountain called Teufelsberg (Devil's Mountain). This mountain as itself is significant, because it was built from debris of 400 000 houses, that were collected after World War II, when Berlin was heavily bombarded. Mountains like this are common also on other European cities. Right next to Teufelsberg (144,7 m) is a hill called Drachenberg which also is made of debris.. The hill is 99 metres high and Berliners are using this hill for sunbathing and flying kites, because surface of mountain is completely flat. There's a excellent view to the city, sadly I didn't had time to be there on night.
On the top of the the hill there's ambiguous structure- The US National Security agency listening station.
First buildings were built at the end of the fifties, when Americans found out that the best place to listen to military traffic from east was Teufelsberg. Station was also used to control air traffic.
In the beginning of nineties, station was purchased by private investors. There was a project to build apartments and a hotel. There were also plans about spy museum. All of these projects turned out to be too expensive.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teufelsberg
Condition of the station is quite good, in Latvia this kind of place would be destroyed by vandals, bums, metal thieves and sometimes owners. There is some damage done as you can see on main tower, fabric finish is peeled off. Some of cables are stolen, but not much. Anyway, this place should be saved, because it's a part of history and German reunification. Parts of Berlin Wall were saved, but station is still on a way to decay.
Football-like structures are covers for antennas, that used to be there. On the main building this "ball" is made of metal and inside it yo can get really interesting acoustic effect. Something delay-reverbish.
For more information and photos I advice you to visit those sites or you can contact me, as always-
http://dasalte.ccc.de/teufelsberg/
http://www.abandonedberlin.com/2010/06/teufelsberg-abandoned-spy-station.html
Getting to/in the place.You have to take a train S9 or S75 and go to station Heerstraße (less than 3 km from Teufelsberg).
Or you can take train S1 and go to station Grünewald (less than 3 km from Teufelsberg). I personally got there by a car, parking is at the bottom of the hill and then you have to walk about 600 m up the hill. Road to the listening station is allowed to use only by pedestrians an bicycles. You can get in the territory by various holes in the fence. They probably change to time after time. I used hole wihch was near main gates, on the right side. I got out near abandoned ski track. Best transport in Berlin of course is a bicycle. I also added a video that I took from the last floor of the tower. Actually its not the last floor, the last is a football-like structure. Sorry about the quality, I filmed it with a phone.
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