Inselbad

Inselbad Eisenhuettenstadt sits at Insel 4 on the edge of the Brandenburg steel town and is operated by Stadtwerke Eisenhuettenstadt, the municipal utility whose energy business shares the same website. 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. Tariffs run from 14 euros for two hours to 30 euros for a day card, infusions are poured on a fixed timetable, and a massage room has recently been added with bookings taken by telephone rather than online.

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 Staedtisches Museum Eisenhuettenstadt, among them Erika Stuermer-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 anywhere on the site, and gives no opening year.