Inselbad

Inselbad Eisenhüttenstadt sits at Insel 4 on the edge of the Brandenburg steel town and is operated by Stadtwerke Eisenhüttenstadt, the municipal utility. The indoor water hall is graded by temperature rather than by theme: a 25-metre pool with eight lanes and a non-swimmers' basin with an elephant slide are held at 28 °C, a lagoon pool with a waterfall and bubble loungers sits at 32 °C, and the toddlers' basin and the whirlpools are the warmest at 33 °C, with the whirlpools reserved for guests aged 16 and over. A current channel and a 50-metre large slide round out the circuit, and a climbing frame known as the octopus is put into the swimmers' pool only at weekends, in the school holidays and on public holidays.

The sauna floor is a separate ticket and a separate rhythm. It holds a traditional Finnish cabin at 90 °C, a Sanarium at 50 °C, a steam bath and an infrared cabin, cooled by an ice fountain and extended by a Taosensa barefoot path, a quiet room, a fireplace room and a small bistro. Days are divided by gender: Wednesday is for women and Thursday for men, while the remaining days are mixed.

Outdoors the site opens into a seasonal Freibecken with a large sunbathing lawn and table-tennis tables, and doubles as an informal sculpture park: the grounds are furnished with loans from the Städtisches Museum Eisenhüttenstadt, among them Erika Stürmer-Alex's Bird Woman and Red Fish and bronzes by Wilfried Fitzenreiter, Walter Kreisel, Herbert Burschik and Joachim Karbe. A motorhome pitch and year-round catering complete a site that reads more as a town amenity than as a resort. The water here is ordinary treated pool water; the operator makes no thermal or mineral claim and gives no opening year.