Lomography

The Tunnel - Austria
written by agrimony on October 10th, 2008 (0 votes)

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Once a good friend of mine told me about an old tunnel somewhere in the mountains near the place I live. It is some kind of secret which everybody knows but nobody could tell where exactly you can find this tunnel. But Ronald found out where the entrance is and where the tunnel leads you to – he’s an adventurer with heart and sole. And so we decided to dare the adventure. We collected every single torch we had, packed our rucksacks with warm clothes, rain jackets and some food and drinks and put on our best alpine boots and headlamps.

The entrance was really hard to find and we needed some time until we discovered it. I guess if it wouldn’t be supported by some timbers the entrance would be caved in long times ago.

So we started our tour. It took us about two hours to cross the tunnel and it was a strange and eerie feeling to know that we were deep down the earth or rock and that there was absolute darkness which was just pervaded by the lights of our torches and headlamps.

On our way we saw some graffiti on the walls – written by people who also knew about the existence of the tunnel and maybe had a spooky party there. We also discovered a mummified deer which was fallen through a duct leading to the surface above, and a scull of another animal.

Although it was very impressing and unusual to walk through it we were somehow glad when we saw the light at the end of the tunnel again! When we came out to daylight we were relieved to escape the weird atmosphere and the oppressive darkness. It was a very warm and sunny day and we had a picnic outside before we went back to Ronald’s car through the tunnel again.

The tunnel is a relict of the Second World War and was built by forced laborers. We found some writings on the wall – maybe names of people who worked there. It affected us very much to know about the history of the tunnel and the hard work people had to do there far away from their homes and families without knowing if they ever will return.