Introspheric

Relaxation – our spacious wellness area with swimming pool (free for hotel guests).

What could be better than after a hard day, a hard drive or a long work week, leaving all the stress behind and coming completely to rest. Relax and recharge your batteries? Pamper your body and your soul.

Fantastic. Super excited, can’t wait to get there, it’s going to be amazing. Now, for those of you who have ever seen the film ‘The Money Pit‘ with Tom Hanks, you’ll know that the above statement is an omen to the abyss of pure shitty luck that is yet to come…

I’m going to try and make this very brief seeing as there’s so much I can say about this place, but here goes.

After checking in and taking a moment to settle after the journey to Geiselwind, Matt and I wanted to explore the hotel. Alas, we couldn’t seem to locate the spa and pool, and we were dying to have a look so we might enjoy our first evening there. Matt asked the reception staff where the spa and pool were. To which, the first bombshell hit…the spa and pool facilities were closed all weekend without prior notice. We had to ask (rather than be offered) if there was any kind of compensation for that seeing as we weren’t told that this was going to be the case during our stay (and it was a big reason we chose to stay at all) and all we got were shrugs from the staff. The room was pricey enough, but now too pricey for our liking seeing as we were only paying for a bed and breakfast. We were offered a 5 euro discount each – the pool admission itself is 8 Euros a go (although now the website since states that it’s free for hotel guests and that the spa is open again – there was no such information beforehand), and the other facilities were 2 Euros a turn so, with an infrared cabin and a sauna to go with the pool, that would have added up to around 20 Euros and that’s if we only wanted to do all of that just once over 2 nights. So in the discount we still got ripped off but beggars can’t be choosers. That was the biggest let down of the hotel, but it got worse from there.

In an attempt to amuse ourselves for the afternoon and evening, we ventured to the casino area….to find that most of the machines were turned off or not working. The massage chair I wanted to try had eaten 6 Euros of our change and done nothing, the billiard pool table was torn on the felt and we went through two pool cues as the tips just fell off when the cues put to use. Great.
We went to ask reception for assistance, to ask why the machines were off or broken and if we could get our 6 Euros back from the massage machine, assuming that reception had they key to open it. 6 Euros might not seem like a big deal, but at this point we were getting very frustrated and anyway, 6 Euros is a big pack of cigarettes. The girl at reception told us twice that it wasn’t her problem because the casino facilities are rented out and don’t belong to the hotel, so again we got shrugs, and no offers of otherwise assistance or recommendations of other things to do. She told us that we pay for a room and that’s it. Eventually (reluctantly) she came up (stormed up) to the casino room to look at the electrics, but ended up switching everything off by accident. I guess she went to call a technician because about 10 minutes later two men came up to look at things and switch it all back on – would it have been a chore to have called a technician in the first place if she didn’t know what she was doing? Instead of basically saying that it’s not her problem and to basically go away? Either way, the working machines were switched back on but the ones that weren’t working were still off and we never got our 6 Euros back. Apparently the hotel isn’t obliged to refunds.
Annoyed and bored, we went back to our room (which was actually very nice, although it was a good job we brought toiletries because there were no complimentary washing shampoos or anything), although there was some kind of roach insect inside of the fridge when we first opened it! Matt has a picture on his phone for those who don’t believe it – I’d attach it to this post but it’s still on his phone and not my laptop or his computer.

Anyway, seeing as it was getting later, we thought that we’d get freshened up for dinner at the restaurant downstairs and try to make a nice evening of it. Oh, no, well, the restaurant is only open for breakfast but we could go to a truck stop a few meters away which is open 24/7. Or there was a Burger King or a McDonalds. We’d gone to Burger King for lunch, so we opted for the 24 hour restaurant. The truck stop was quite lovely, I’ll say that. We gave the waitress a nice tip which she really appreciated I was perked up a little bit after dinner, but Matt (who had paid for the hotel stay) was still less than amused. Understandably. I assured him that it couldn’t get much worse, that we’d still have a lovely time at the amusement park tomorrow, and if we get moody with each other then it’d only make things totally horrible as opposed to relatively disappointing. We took a brisk walk around the area and got back to the room. Decided that we’d like to chill out and watch some TV before bed. We had been provided a TV guide and list of channels that we could watch…and most of the channels displayed a black screen with ‘kein dienst’ – no service. Well, it seems the TV takes the same attitude as the staff. We ended up watching a mexican language cooking show and fell asleep at about 7 or 8pm because there was nothing better to do.
The hotel wasn’t situated within walking distance to the town or anything so there was nowhere to really go (we would have driven somewhere, but we hadn’t come by car. Lesson learned.)
So that was the first day.

The second day was a breeze, simply because we weren’t even in the hotel. We’d come to Geiselwind to go to the Freizeit-Land amusement park. Although the weather was wet and gloomy, when it was hot, clear, and gloriously sunny the day before, we still had a good time and really enjoyed ourselves. It was so refreshing that everything in the park was actually working and not off limits, and all the staff were friendly and helpful. As you’d expect. The only problem was that we had to get to the theme park, about 3 or 4km away. The reception at the hotel had agreed with us on our arrival that they could call a taxi for us as long as we gave them about 30 minutes prior notice, which we did.
They called back to tell us that the taxi could be there to pick us up at 11am. The park itself opened at 9am and we had got up and dressed at 8am. Totally unacceptable, that’s two hours of amusement park fun lost (and that’s even before getting into the place), and we had no idea how busy it was going to be so that could have equalled long lines etc. Had enough of this stupid place, so we then walked all the way there and made it about 5 minutes early. This hotel REALLY is about ‘if you want something done, do it yourself, and do it in the mindset that nobody will help you…because they won’t.’

I thought the breakfast at the Mandarin restaurant was quaint – of course, being in Germany, I wasn’t surprised that it was a continental breakfast mini-buffet and the waiter was very warm and welcoming. He must have been the nicest member of staff there. I enjoyed my morning coffee and breakfast sandwich, but there wasn’t a big variety of things to choose from. Luncheon meats and bread rolls, croissants, hard boiled eggs, tea/coffee, cereal, and condiments/spreads. Not bad, I thought it was cute, but considering that the hotel has been raved about as much as it has, it was a bit lackluster. Not even anything like bacon or breakfast pancakes, which disappointed my American companion.
The niceties of breakfast were, of course, short lived when I ventured to get a pack of cigarettes from the hotel’s cigarette machine downstairs. The machine wouldn’t accept my German bank card which I normally use for every other cigarette machine because they require these cards as a form of age identification so that one might legally purchase the cigarettes. After many different methods of trying, I reluctantly took myself to the dreaded reception desk…I was served by an older man who offered me a particular blue card which, like my bank card, had an electronic chip in it. I thanked him gratefully and tried again with this card. Several times. No such luck. I wondered if I was reading the instructions wrong seeing as my German language skills aren’t exactly perfect, so I returned to the reception desk to ask him if he could help me with it. Guess what I got?
SHRUGS. He shrugged at me and splayed his palms out with exasperation and said ‘then it doesn’t work, sorry.’

DOES ANYTHING IN THIS GOD FORSAKEN HOTEL FUNCTION PROPERLY?!

I wanted to say that, but I didn’t.
Instead I gave him the card back and thanked him anyway, and fetched my phone from the room so that I could use the internet to translate what the machine was telling me. Made no difference. In the end I just went to the gas station to get cigarettes, and got rained on, which was the reason I wanted to use the in-house cig machine in the first place.

Now, aside from the actual Hotel for a moment, it seems that the cold and purely unconcerned, self-centered nature of the Hotel Strohofer was an epidemic in the surrounding area (with exception to the 24hr restaurant of course.)
While we’d had lunch at Burger King on the first day, I’d accidentally left my purse on a chair at the outside area of the restaurant and not even realised until the following morning. In a frenzy, we rushed over to BK to see if someone had handed it in and were very possibly holding it for me. We were greeted by a young woman who was leaning on the counter over some kind of checklist. Thankfully she spoke English, so we told her about the situation and asked if my bag was there. I described it to her in a mix of German and English, trying very hard whilst beside myself with worry and she slowly shook her head, pursing her lips inwards and closing her eyes. Literally, she was like Conswela the mexican maid from Family Guy. “No…no…not here…no….sorry.”

I started to panic.

“But it has my passport in there! Meine Ausweis! Is there nobody in the back room who can help me? Can’t you just go and look? Isn’t there anyone who was working here yesterday who can help me?”
With every question it was “No…no…” and more ignorant SHRUGS.
While I was pleading with this insolent girl to at least do something, anything other than standing in the same spot saying ‘nope’ and shaking her silly head at us, Matthew was signalling to a taller dark haired woman in a management outfit in the back room.
I was about ready to slap the Stupid out of this girl and throw her face into the fryer with the potatoes and go into the back room myself, when the dark haired woman came over with a smile. In a daze of distress I asked her, not even sure whether I was saying it right or not,
“Bitte helfen sie mir, ist meine handtasche hier?? Schwarz und grosse?” (Please will you help me, is my handbag here? Black and large?)
She asked me for my name, smiled with a slight nod, and went into the back room. She came back shortly holding my beloved bag and my wallet from inside. I’ve never been so relieved in my life. I said to the ignorant girl, see, it wouldn’t have killed you to ask or look for it, would it?
She laughed.
We left.
So, although that’s outside of the Hotel review, be wary of staff in the surrounding area of the Hotel too. As long as we were anywhere near the god damn Hotel Strohofer, it was bad luck after bad luck and I can assure you that I will never be going back.

EVER.