What is Urbex? In the travel community there are a lot of really wankey terms, such as digital nomads. From what we can gather the difference between a digital nomad and a person that “works online” is that a Digital Nomad has to tell people every 5 minutes that he works online and is REALLY successful. He likes to hang out around other digital nomads, which invariably leads to non stop pissing contests.
And then you have parkour. Parkour is basically idiots dancing and jumping around on stairs and stuff preceding its a sport. It’s not a sport, its stupid.
What does this have to do with Urbex? Nothing really, it was probably just two points I really wanted to get off my chest.
So, what is Urbex? Urban stands for Urban Exploration and in its simplest form involves exploring urban structures, abandoned buildings, factories and the like. Remember when you used to break into abandoned buildings as kid, smash windows and stuff? Little did you know, but you were a teenage shit-bag hipster Pioneer!
So, whilst there is a hipster element to Urbex, I mean just the name stinks of it, it is also pretty damned cool, and depending on the context and destination, probably illegal.
Abandoned buildings
These are usually the illegal ones, pretty much everything on the planet, abandoned, or not is owned by someone, so more than likely you will be trespassing. Quite how illegal it is depends on who owns it. We know of “friends” who got arrested exploring the abandoned nuclear power plant in Cuba. Thankfully because Cuba is a socialist paradise a bribe was enough to get away from things.
Other classics for Urbex include catacombs and ghost cities. Probably the best “ghost city” is Kangbashi in China, although some people do live there, so its only ghost-ish.
Is Urbex dangerous?
Urban is really dangerous, which is probably part of its allure. Essentially you are pissing about in abandoned buildings, there are no warning signs, so Urbex folk die pretty much every year. Obviously not cool that people die, but some people like danger!
And that is the story of Urbex, a lot less shit than the hipsters make it out to be.
