Urban Explorer Bob Thissen from Born explores abandoned and forbidden locations around the world. He captures everything on screen and often squeezes into dangerous situations. Even arrests on military bases. Thissen now has a chance to win a travel vlog prize of 30,000 euros thanks to his videos.
He finds it difficult to estimate whether he has a chance. Because whoever gets the most votes wins. “Most other big travel vloggers have more reach. But what I do is a lot more extreme.”
Espionage
He then lists a list of dangerous trips that always went just fine: on old secured military bases that he entered secretly with the chance of being shot at. He was also detained in Ukraine for days because they suspected him of espionage. “And in Fukushima Japan, I was there too. Do I ever get scared? No, not that. I always look for new boundaries, even though I’m sure something will go wrong. But I do everything with discretion.”
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20 years of experience
Thissen has seen almost the whole world in his 20 years of Urban Exploring. “Even countries that aren’t even officially on the world map.” His video library is huge, but not everything is on the internet. “A number of videos are deliberately offline. I’m sure I’ll get into trouble because of those images.”
space shuttle
But the adventurer emphasizes that it’s not all about the thrill and adrenaline. The aesthetics of abandoned locations with a historical story fascinate him enormously. “I think that’s fantastic. It’s also a piece of documentation of the history that took place there. My most beautiful trip remains the abandoned Russian space station in Kazakhstan. There I was on an old space shuttle.”
Ukraine
His next trip? “Actually I would go to Ukraine and Russia to discover old bunkers. But instead I’m going to Peru on Monday. Actually as a regular holiday, but I think I’ll take some abandoned places along the way.”
Until Monday you can voted become.
Watch a compilation here: