Erlebnisbad Schaumberg

The Erlebnisbad Schaumberg stands in the Erlebnispark at Tholey in the northern Saarland, at the foot of the Schaumberg hill, and is run by Schaumbergbad Tholey GmbH for the municipality. It divides cleanly into two priced areas: a family bathing hall open all year, and a separate sauna landscape called Sauna Vicus. On the bathing side there are six basins. A heated 25-metre swimmer's pool with five lanes is kept at 28.5 °C, a teaching pool and a lagoon pool with a current channel at 29 °C, the slide catch pool likewise at 29 °C, and an outdoor pool at 27 °C which opens from May to the end of September. The parent-and-child basin runs much warmer at 36 °C and is fitted out for the youngest visitors with two small slides, a water fountain, water animals and a bamboo house.

The headline attraction is a 103-metre giant tunnel slide; a second slide, a current channel and massage jets fill out the leisure section. Two whirlpools at a core temperature of 36 °C run all year, and two steam rooms at 45 °C sit inside the bathing area, charged by the minute at 25 cents for each two minutes begun. A broad lawn adjoins the outdoor pool. The bath also runs its own programme of courses: baby and toddler swimming, beginners' courses ending with the Seepferdchen badge, free aqua gymnastics in the lagoon pool on Monday afternoons and Tuesday and Thursday mornings, and aqua jogging in the swimmer's pool on Fridays.

Sauna Vicus is a village of six cabins, entered on a combined ticket that includes the bathing hall. A rustic Kelo log sauna at 90 °C seats seventy to eighty guests for the Aufguss ceremonies, and beside it stand an 80 °C spruce dry sauna, a free-standing bio sauna at 70 °C with changing coloured light, a 60 °C stone saunarium where a basket of hot stones is regularly dipped into a water basin, a 45 °C steam bath for eight people where salt is handed out as a body scrub, and a five-seat infrared cabin. A Roman wellness house, a temple-shaped experience shower with a cold-water hose, a whirlpool at 29 °C set into a stone landscape, four footbath stations, a darkened sleeping room with five loungers and roughly 200 square metres of upstairs rest rooms with a view over the grounds complete the sauna side. Thursdays are reserved all day for women, except on public holidays.

Admission to the bathing hall is charged by time: from 6 euro for two hours for an adult up to 10.50 euro for a day card, with family tickets from 18 euro and free entry for children under six. A sauna ticket including the bath costs from 20 euro for four and a half hours. Swimming and sauna end fifteen minutes before closing, and the operator warns that groups and its own courses can rope off individual basins during normal opening.