Group Headquarters of the Soviet Central Group of Forces Base 15/3/09 Day 241

Day 241 (Slide show)

I had just got back from skiing in Switzerland when I received an email from my friend Ricardo here in Prague. He wanted to know if I was interested in a day trip to an old Soviet Air Force Base outside of Prague. The weather didn’t look very good but I thought this would be a lot of fun. It’s a Sunday morning and I headed to this old train station here in Prague. I had been by it several times but never inside the place. It is called Masarykova. Their doing a small remodel in the place but it has a real old funky fell to it. There is always a plethora of local color hanging out around the place.

Anyway after boarding the train for a short 40 min ride then we switched to another single rural train that was only one car. This was a fun 15 min ride and then we were in the village of Milovice which is northeast of Prague. Then there was a short walk in the rain to the Group Headquarters of the Soviet Central Group of Forces. About the time we walked onto the old tarmac the rain stopped. The place is very large with many old building that have been left to rot. As I’m walking through I thought of Greece and all the ruins I had seen there. Of course it isn’t the same but the feel of history was a bit overwhelming. The place was decommissioned in the mid eighties and when you think about it that’s only 20 years. Who would have thought back in the late 70’s that a Yankee from California would be walking around the place today. Because this was the Group Headquarters I’m sure there were many high ranking officers floating in and out of here. Check out the pictures and Ricardo even found a bullet slug that someone had fired into a wall. I’m sure it is just some local guy playing around but it still interesting. I have it and I'm going to give it to my Dad when I see him.

He likes things like this.

The site now is used for many things. I saw a weekend warrior training area with some clerks dressed up in fatigues doing some mock assaults. There was an area where auto enthusiasts have a garage set up to modify thier cars to race on the tarmac. Then on one end of the base there is a movie set. This looked like a POW camp or a small encampment used to film in. It was very cool.

There were about 10 of us and we had a nice day even though the weather gave us rain and cold wind. I still enjoyed it.