| Hotel and restaurant experience as Brits ... Posted by grahame at 07:25, 24th July 2026 |     |
A hotel we will not be using again ... a Trip Advisor review from last (2025) December:
Visited the Harz mountains with the [group name] and part of the trip took us to the restaurant of this hotel. There were 17 of us 2 with food allergies. All food choices were made weeks in advance so the staff should have been well prepared. Upon our arrival we had drinks and sat on one long table. After an hour no food had been served. Complaints to the staff appeared to fall on deaf ears. We were adjacent to the main restaurant seating are and could clearly see people who had arrived after us being served but again complaints fell on deaf ears. When the food finally arrived it was cold for most if not all of us. 2 of the party who had the food allergies later became ill. Service was rubbish no snacks were offered to appease us and certainly no apology. They did however find the time to offer us drinks at our cost no complimentary drinks or drinks at reduced cost were offered. The impression I got was that we were English and treated as second class citizens a feeling felt throughout that region from some of the locals.
I have to admit also feeling like second class citizens at dinner on the day after we arrived . We were kept standing (no easy for Lisa) for a while before being seated, while service went on all around us. When we were seated, at an awkward table than would not have been our choice, service was slow. Others who arrived and were seated after us were served first. Drinks arrived wrong, and that after a careful discussion on what was wanted. I needed (and that's a need not just a want) water to help me eat, but it was very hard to attract any of the wait staff's attention and when we did the order was taken but never delivered. We raised this with the waitress in charge - who was the one who had eventually taken our order - and she *did* apologise - sort of, passing the blame on to here team who she said she had told. As far as I could see, we were the only ones with service issues.
I picked up this particular review after the event, having looked back to see if our experiences were unique. On the hotel side, the young lady who checked us in was pleasant and polite and seemed helpful, but seemed to struggle with the computer system in finding our booking and giving us our room. My time and motions hat had me crawling with frustration, and it later turned out as far as I could tell she had only encoded the key card for one day, meaning a further trip to the reception (in a different building) and another long wait on the IT system. As we checked out, I paid the room tax ("cash only") and it was the same young lady who told me we weren't staying there ... read out for me the guest names in the building we were in and then - "oops - those are the names for tonight" and then she found us.
"Room 422 in the building just across" - building easy to find, guess at where to hold the keycard, and it worked. But only 2 floors and it was a guess in the lift. No use of the convention of the first digit being the floor number. We *did* find our room on the second floor. The room was nice - very nice - but we got the feeling that some aspects were designed by a designer and not by someone who stayed in hotels. Lack of a bedside table, lack of a light controllable from the bed, or indeed a light over one side of the bed, electronic door lock that closed so quickly we could hardly get into the room.
I read the review I quoted at the beginning; yes, I do think the hotel treated us differently and less caringly because we were from far, far away. The review quoted talks of being part of a group, and I suspect the wider issues are part of the concerns they had across the region. Certainly we have found that in Germanic countries and touristy areas that the groups can be off-putting to even us as individual tourists, with guides somewhat pushy as they look after their groups to the exclusion and comfort of others. "Do you mind moving your bag so we can sit" works well with the general population and leads to conversations, but it was a tour guide who blocked us on the previous trip from getting to the mobility impaired seating for Lisa - "these seats are all reserved" when they were not!
We may return to Wernigerode - the town is lovely, the other restaurant we ate in got it so exactly right that they put our hotel to shame with the contrast, and the Harz railway system and area and places it passes are fascinating. In some ways "preserved" but not really - heritage haulage on a tourist line up the Brocken, modernised in so many ways, with branches and lines off which are varied and perhaps suffer from being far too close to the "honeytrap" section when they are worth a visit in their own right.
Well - should I post a review? Some concerns were raised with the restaurant manager / head waitress but she fobbed it off onto her staff - and did give us a bottle of water to take up to the room. "If something's nor right, please tell us" is a common line / desire from places, but here I got the impression that it was a nuisance to raise issues and they know better than we could. I will probably not post any review, but if you're headed to Wernigerode and pick up this post, I'll be happy to name in private and help friends not have the same clouds spoil the otherwise wonderfully sunny feel of the town and area.
