Rogner-Bad Blumau Spa, Austria – Globe and Mail
Kenneth Bagnell
Austria’s Rogner-Bad Blumau is one of the most eye-catching spas you’ll ever see. In fact, it regards itself as a work of art: “The world’s largest inhabitable work of art.”It’s also been called Europe’s most advanced holistic centre, with innumerable programs and a large staff dedicated to personal health and physical fitness.
Depending on your perspective, the design is either spectacularly imaginative or ridiculously eccentric. There are hundreds of windows, each one distinct in size and form. There are domes, cupolas and pillars. The enthusiastic use of colours, vivid and random, makes the place look like it was painted by artists on a week-long LSD trip.
But this wasn’t the case. Rogner-Bad Blumau was designed by famed Austrian architect and artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser. Mr. Hundertwasser died in 2000, just a few years after creating the spa, but he left in words the philosophy behind it: “If you let windows dance by designing them in different styles, and if you allow as many irregularities as possible on façades and inside, houses will regain their health and begin to live.”
Location:The spa is set in a speck of a village called Blumau, 60 kilometres from the small city of Graz in Austria’s Styria province, a land of climbing forests and farm houses whose window boxes cascade with flowers.Graz will attract lots of attention next year as Europe’s cultural capital for 2003. It’s two hours by train from Vienna.
Clientele: Most guests are Austrian, German, Swiss or Italian. Many are couples with children, since the hotel caters to kids with a wave pool, a children’s thermal area and by offering creative activities in its Adventure Club. The hotel’s six conference rooms draw business groups from around the globe.
Spa treatments:The range of treatments includes health, mind, beauty and massage therapies, with such exotic fare as “intuitive sensitive massage with Bach flowers,” “esalen massage,” and an “Aphrodite bath” with saffron, honey and mare’s milk. The Cleopatra bath uses mare’s milk and plant-based oils and includes the ultimate in aromatic body cocooning. After a thoroughly relaxing massage, you are wrapped in warm, moist blankets to allow the mare’s milk do what it did for Cleopatra.
After a doctor’s examination at the medical centre, you can undergo acupuncture, laser therapy and various other treatments. Wellness seekers might try electrotherapy for rheumatism, in which mild electrical impulses are channelled into afflicted areas to help relieve pain.In a sound therapy treatment called “singing bowl and gongs,” a doctor (formerly a family physician) places a brass bowl on the patient’s chest. Then, he silently and deftly moves around the table, shaking a tambourine and strumming a one-string instrument so that the air of the clinic room fills with the soft sounds of bells, drums and gongs. This, the doctor says, sends vibrations through the patient’s body, inducing self-healing. If nothing else, the treatment leaves one feeling surprisingly deeply relaxed and refreshed
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Food and drink: The spa’s six restaurants vary in menu and style from à la carte to bistro to buffet, but all feature, for the most part, organic and Styrian food, often fused with national favourites such as potato strudel. While Styrian red wines are far better than what Austria is generally known for, the selection is mainly white, notably a flowery Welschriesling, in the spa’s à la carte room, Fiene Sachen.
Service: With a staff of 350 and just over 270 rooms, service is superior. The staff, virtually all of whom speak English, aren’t just trained in tourism schools, but in programs on site. Therapists, all of whom are licensed, undergo even more training.The beauty centre, Wunderschon, is staffed by professional skin care technicians using products from plant origins, containing natural oils and proteins.
Design:The three-building complex is remarkable for its 1,600 square metres of thermal pools and canals. The floors flow like waves over Venetian bridges that lead from building to building. The interior realizes Mr. Hundertwasser’s vision: By breaking with convention and allowing architectural irregularity, his creation is filled with energy.
Bottom line: Given its range of treatments, exotic design and emphasis on the whole family, Rogner-Bad Blumau offers true value. There’s plenty to see and do: exploring the facilities takes days.
Contact information: Rogner-Bad Blumau, A-8283 Blumau 100, Austria. Phone: 43 (3383) 51000; fax: 43 (3383) 5100808; e-mail: spa.blumau@rogner.com; Web: http://www.blumau.com.The basic double room rate of between $220 and $250 includes full buffet breakfast and free access to the spa, freshwater wave pool, indoor and outdoor thermal pools, sauna, sweat bath and steam bath. There is no charge for use of a private nudist suntan island. Children up to 12 stay free in parents’ rooms, and membership in the Adventure Club and care in the child-care facility are complimentary.