There it goes BLUB

There you are, just two weeks out of town and already we have to deal with dramatic changes upon returning. No, the BER hasn't opened yet. It's even more spectacular: The BLUB is being demolished.

BLUB?

When Gudrun and I were in Berlin together for the first time in 2016, HRS recommended the Hotel BLUB as an affordable accommodation. What a silly name, what does it even mean? The answer was behind the hotel parking lot in the form of several buildings that clearly had seen better days. Not proper ruins yet but obviously dilapidated. Professor Google knew the answer. Half overgrown, there lay the actual BLUB, the Berlin Luft- und Badeparadies.

The water park opened in 1985 and was very popular for many years. The construction costs amounted to 44 million marks, of which the state of Berlin contributed nine million marks as an interest-free loan. Since its opening, Blub, which was the shirt sponsor for Hertha BSC in the 1985/1986 season, has had about seven million visitors. Initially, there were still 600,000 visitors per year, but by 2001 the number of visitors had dropped to 330,000 annually.

The decline in visitor numbers was due to frequent complaints about hazardous areas and lack of hygiene. The rats from the nearby Teltow Canal apparently didn't mind the noise and chlorine. Parts of the pool were closed temporarily from 1999 onwards. On February 1, 2005, the Blub closed for good, only the sauna area remained open until 2012. The hotel was renamed.

After that, a new career began. The BLUB became one of Berlin's lost places, in the same league as Spreepark or the listening stations on Teufelsberg. But unlike those, the BLUB was practically freely accessible until two weeks ago, because a fence that had been installed following a fire in 2016 had only symbolic significance. So the site became a multi-functional area. You could get scared here, skate in empty swimming pools, or perform other daring feats. There was plenty of space to spend the night, plenty of building structure to set on fire, and plenty of surface area to spray paint. Eventually, someone will certainly tally up how many rap videos were shot here. We also helped a young man carry the corresponding speaker system from the Grenzalle subway station. But it certainly wasn't always that harmless. On average, once a week, the event location was visited by the fire department and/or police with flashing lights.

At the same time, efforts were underway to convert the site for another use, but unfortunately these were much less dynamic. It was still being discussed as a possible reopening of the water park until 2011, and in 2012 the first concept for residential use was presented. But despite a constant increase in the demand for housing, progress was apparently not being made. The Berlin newspapers then reported in 2015 that demolition was imminent, but nothing happened, except for the aforementioned major fire and the construction of a fence. It looked as if the owners and the Neukölln district were waiting for hobby vandals (Tagespiegel) to take care of the demolition for them. But then they let the professionals take over and large parts of the ruins turned into piles of rubble. Construction will now begin imminently. By the way, so will the opening of BER.

Daniel Dehnert took the good photos in 2018, the current ones are from me.

You can also check here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berliner_Luft-_und_Badeparadies

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzphiLJpoP0

https://www.tagesspiegel.de/berlin/freizeitbad-blub-planschen-klettern-ferien-machen/1640854.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kc8X9rD8Tss