What the experts think
Children speak their mind.
Kinderhotels through the eyes of the children.
Gerlinde Heil
It’s not exactly difficult to find children between the ages of 4 and 12 to be interviewed and say a few words about Kinderhotels! Every child would like to go there – and once they have been, they always remember it!
Gudrun is 10 now and already has a long career in Kinderhotels behind her. Hardly surprising: She’s my daughter. And when can we actually go somewhere else?
“I can still remember my first holiday in the Baby Hotel – I was five then: It was big, enormous. And no-one got cross. And I had my own room. But now I am bigger we go to the Appelhof. There is an Adventure School there where you can climb and do really wicked things, like sliding across the pond on a rope. I always take a lot of friends with me because the children’s room is big enough for five children. At Whitsun I learnt to do a backward somersault on the trampoline! And in the evenings we grill sausages on the camp fire. We sometimes need an extra bag to take home because I have made so many different things …”
Children in the snow Gudrun’s brother is 7 and he has a few things to say too: “In the Baby Hotel I always used to enjoy playing in the water. And they even have a separate children’s shower there! Once I dropped my plate when I was eating. It had spaghetti on it. But then a woman came and told me not to cry. She cleared it all up and brought me some more spaghetti. With lots of red sauce. My favourite thing at the Appelhof is that Milan [the Kite?] lives there. He writes children’s books and reads to us from them.”
Mimi comes from Wiesbaden – she is now 8 years old and is still impressed by her first holiday in Gina’s hotel: “In Austria all the children learn how to ski. I wanted to do that too. We went to the Kinderhotel. There was so much snow there! And children everywhere, all learning to ski. In a separate ski school, just for us. I was a bit scared because it was so slippery and you sometimes went so fast. Then I preferred to sit down in the snow. On the last day there was a race with a stop-watch. I fell over just before the finish. But I got up again straight away and carried on. My Dad congratulated me: I still came second and I got a real medal! Because it was so good there we went again in the summer. It was really funny because there was no snow there at all. But we did have four pools. I kept going in one after the other. I learnt to dive properly with a diving suit etc.! And I found a best friend straight away on the first day. She was then allowed to stay the night once in my room. She is coming to Gina’s Hotel again this year at the same time as us. We’re going to do another diving course. I’m already really looking forward to it!”
Little Magician Six years old and on the stage already – that’s brave! Luca plucked up courage and learnt some magic tricks at the Zirkushotel Urbani. “I really did do magic tricks!” It was very hard. You have to hold your fingers just right and you also have to learn how to paint your face. And then you have to make sure the parents don’t see how the trick works. At first I couldn’t do the trick with the button at all, I had to practise for a very long time. But in any case I mustn’t tell you how it works because it’s a secret! Then at the end of the holiday we put on a show. And because I was so good, I performed the trick with the button. You know, my parents couldn’t work out how it was done!”
Linda likes a cuddle. Even as a baby she liked a lot of cuddles and now that she’s a big girl of five she still hasn’t turned into a daredevil – but she doesn’t need to in the Habachklause Kinderhotel anyway. “ I went for a walk with my Mum. There was a shed. There were some really tiny baby cats next to it. Their mum was there too. They were playing with a little stick. The kitten with the black ears was sweet. Then a man came. He put the cat on my lap. She was really soft and warm and she sniffed at me. I called her Petra and went to visit her every day and stroked her.”
Kinderhotels are there for the children.
Whether they are mountain lovers, adventurers, bookworms, conjurors, water babies or if like a cuddle:
Children are allowed all that. And what about the parents? They like it too.
