The hotel where you eat, sleep and maybe dream of sausages – they’re all around you
- From wallpaper to ceiling mobiles to the soap in the bathroom, the sausage theme is pervasive at the Bratwurst Hotel in southern Germany
- Opened by a village butcher to promote his trade amid falling meat consumption and rise of the big-box store, it has drawn curious visitors since opening
Sausages on the menu, sausage motifs on the wallpaper, sausage mobiles hanging from the ceiling – and to top it off, a sausage-shaped pillow on your bed.
What sounds like a vegetarian’s nightmare is the audacious dream come true of Claus Boebel, a fourth-generation butcher and proprietor of what he calls the world’s first and only sausage-themed hotel.
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Located in a tidy village with a population of 300, a 40-minute drive south of the German city of Nuremberg, the Bratwurst Hotel has done brisk business since its opening in September, with guests from across Europe and overseas popping in for a visit.
In a slope-roofed stone house, the inn with seven rooms and two conference spaces caters to foodies and tourists looking for a splash of local colour.
Behind the quirky initiative is a Hail Mary bid to keep alive the local butcher’s shop – an institution in most towns that was once a pillar of Germany’s Mittelstand economy of small and medium-sized businesses – in the face of big-box store competition and falling meat consumption.
“I want to show that small craftsman shops like mine can survive when you have clever ideas,” said Boebel, seated on a stool shaped like a tin of minced sausage.