The Bottle House was built in the 1970s by a quirky loner, a man named Rudi (his last name is unknown), in a remote wooded area – without official permission. Thousands of wine bottles, jars, and liquor bottles, bound together by mortar, form the basic building material for the walls of this building, which has been abandoned for about a quarter of a century.
Rudi was evidently a skilled craftsman; everything is meticulously crafted, the walls are straight, and the structural integrity is sound. The two-story, low-rise building – apart from damage caused by vandalism – still stands quite solidly in the forest and attracts many lost placers.
The builder, who reportedly even the nearest neighbors a kilometer away weren't aware of, lived quite comfortably in the never-completed cottage, had running water for the shower and toilet, and even electricity thanks to a solar panel on the roof and a generator, which he distributed throughout the house via professionally installed wiring.
One day, when excavators arrived to demolish the illegal building, Rudi is said to have stood on the roof with a rifle to defend his life's work. He apparently didn't fire, though some legends claim otherwise.
Rudi, who suffered from dementia and was placed in a nursing home, has since passed away. The forest, including the bottle house, changed hands around the turn of the millennium. The new owner has allowed the bottle house to fall into disrepair. All attempts by the authorities to have the illegal building, considered an eyesore, demolished have so far been unsuccessful.
The bottle house is the unusual life's work of an equally unusual person. It is sad that so much has already been destroyed here through vandalism.