Searching For Afflatus

Okay so maybe my chest wasn’t as busty and I wasn't sporting a pair of Heckler & Koch handguns hanging off of my curvy hips, but this was the closest I felt to the infamous fictional female tomb raider in my life.
Beelitz-Heilstätten puts forth its best efforts to prevent those who are not worthy from getting too close in proximity to the secrets it holds. Forbidden (that’s “verboten” in German) areas, security guards, and questionable structural integrity are just some of the prevention strategies used...but what satisfying video game ever excluded these thrilling elements?
My fellow explorer and I were not about to pass up investigating the complex where Hitler himself, amongst thousands, was nursed back to health. A place made up of more than sixty buildings and abandoned for over twenty years was sure to provide the alternative tourism encounter that paid homage to neighboring Berlin hipsters.
Ultimately, navigating through the haunting decay met with the workmanship and facetiousness of the graffiti artists before us was a lesson in stealth. It involved a certain amount of creativity in fabricating your own entrance and exit. A corridor under the mansion was one such passageway into the depths containing kilometers of cables and piping. A deceiving dead end to brick and mortar once again gave the impression that we were not welcome and should make a U-turn back towards the train station. But the great adventurers of our time, fictional or not, would do no such thing. A tight squeeze through the darkness landed us directly below a grand ballroom where footsteps of a group overhead echoed throughout the hall and down into the gap in the floor we hid under.
Our imaginations, scoffing at reality, gave the ownership of these sounds to Nazi spies up to some devious deed. Lacking the firepower to aid us in a possible confrontation, we waited until the voices died off. With the sound of the door closing behind, we peeked over the aged wooden floorboards to spot a four-poster bed illuminated by faux stained glass mimicking the streams of light that would have poured in decades earlier. Soft primary colors framed a bed that would not have been out of place at a honeymoon in the tropics. Laced with pale white linen and fresh sheets, it provided a striking juxtaposition to the decrepit surroundings.
Just one more beautiful secret Beelitz-Heilstätten was able to reward to those determined enough to brave its deterring demeanor.