Badeland Wolfsburg

BadeLand Wolfsburg is a leisure and sports bath in the Allerpark north-east of the centre of Wolfsburg in Lower Saxony, on a rise above the Allersee and next to the Eis Arena. German Wikipedia records that the predecessor Badeland opened on 15 April 1977 and was destroyed on 14 January 1999 by a fire started by a faulty sauna stove, on the very day rebuilding was to have begun; the replacement was built on the same site and opened on 2 February 2002. It is owned by the city of Wolfsburg and operated by GMF of Neuried, part of the Aspro group. Wikipedia describes it as the largest bath of its kind in northern Germany and one of the most visited leisure baths in the country. The operator gives the bathing landscape as 22,000 square metres; Wikipedia adds a water surface of 3,000 square metres.

The house divides into a sports bath, a fun bath and a two-level sauna landscape. The sports bath holds a 50-by-25-metre competition pool lit by forty underwater floodlights and fitted with timing equipment and four underwater windows; Wikipedia counts ten lanes and about 150 grandstand seats, and the operator reserves lanes one to six for schools and clubs and keeps seven to nine free. Beside it are a diving pool with one-metre and three-metre boards and three-metre and five-metre towers over 3.80 metres of water, and a non-swimmers' pool 1.35 metres deep. Water in the sports bath is held at 27 C.

The fun bath is built around a wave pool, which Wikipedia gives as 520 square metres with several wave strengths and patterns. Two slides run from it: the Black Hole, a fully darkened tube slide 110 metres long fitted with illustrated illusion screens, and a 139-metre tyre slide with illustrations and sound, both with a minimum age of six years. Outdoors, a current channel that Wikipedia measures at 110 metres is reached from the Mediterranean pool, a basin of about 800 square metres with current and massage jets, underwater loungers and cascade showers. Water in the fun bath is stated at 28 C on the operator's page and 30 C by Wikipedia; the children's water play garden is 34 C, and Wikipedia names a roughly 40-square-metre bubble pool at 36 C as the warmest basin in the house. At the time of writing the operator notes that the whirlpools in the fun bath are out of use because of a technical fault, with no repair date given.

The sauna landscape spreads over two floors and an outdoor garden and holds eleven saunas, of which the operator places eight indoors. Named cabins and their temperatures are a panorama sauna at 70 C with a view over the Allersee, a herb sauna at 85 C, a rest oasis at 84 C, an aroma bath at 45 C, a bio-sauna at 55 C, a blossom bath at 45 C, an experience oasis at 92 C and a hamam at 45 C indoors, plus a salionarium at 55 C, a fireplace sauna at 80 C and a banja at 85 C outside; the outdoor area also has a cold pool. A sauna restaurant with a bathrobe rule, a day spa run by Askero, and a fitness studio operated by Actic complete the offer. Children from five may enter the sauna accompanied.

The water is plain heated tap water: nothing on the operator's site or in Wikipedia describes it as thermal, mineral or brine. The sports bath opens Monday to Friday from 08:00 to 22:00 and at weekends, in holidays and on public holidays from 08:00 or 09:00 to 21:00; the fun bath opens Monday to Friday from 10:00 to 21:00 and at weekends from 09:00 to 21:00; the sauna opens Monday to Friday from 11:00 to 22:00 and at weekends from 11:00 to 21:00. Bathing ends 30 minutes before the house closes, last admission is an hour before, and the slides shut 45 minutes before closing. The house is closed on 24, 25 and 31 December and opens on 1 January from 12:00 to 20:00.