Soltau, Germany
What's the opposite of luxury hotel accommodations? Camping!
In northern Germany, EuroCoaster'13 found overnight accommodations at a theme park campsite.
No tent? No problem!
Welcome to the wonderful world of
"Glamping." That's a term meaning half "Glamour" and half "Camping."
"It's like Caribean Beach meets Siberia," Adam said of the "luxury" accommodations.
Heide Park is quickly becoming one of Germany's biggest amusement parks. In the pack of the property awaits "Holiday Camp."
The yellow, blue and pink huts look fashionable on the outside. Inside, find the bare essentials; "bare" being the key word.
Open the door after midnight and discover plywood walls, beds with no sheets and a cement floor. Fortunately, we had a small heater, after temps. dropped under 40 degrees.
Since accommodations don't come with sheets or linens, we rented them from the front desk. Actually, the sheets are more like a sleep sack (crawl in like a bug in a rug. See Scott's photo below). The reception area was close to the bathroom... the same bathroom we wound use since our hut had no restroom facility. The walk for John Adam to "the john" was just 3 minutes.
What we did not have in way of a bathroom, we found in conversation. But not between ourselves, rather the men in the hut with us.
That's right, your two happy campers shared a hut with two strangers. They were tucked away in their rented sheets, us in ours. Now, there was a plywood wall separating our "rooms," but you could hear every word, cough, grunt and snore from the other side.
In the morning, we woke in a sweat. That little space heater worked overtime when the stars were out.
"If I had to guess, it was 85 in there," Adam speculated.
Deciding he had not sweated enough, Scott crawled out if his bed sack and went for a run around the campground and theme park. While he jogged, the rides were put through their morning paces & testing.
"Why is everyone looking at me?" he thought. "Oh, yeah. I am the only one wearing shorts in this country, since it's 40 degrees."
By the time Scott finished and showered in the locker room, we missed the free breakfast, but the full day at Heide Park made up for it.
"We didn't even get a campfire," Adam recalls.
That's Glamping for you!
Next: Lunch in our own TeePee.
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