Latest news with #SchlossElmau
Yahoo
17-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
In the Bavarian Alps, Waltzing My Way Into Family History
Schloss Elmau 'Look into your partner's eyes. Make the connection. Helen, put your hand on your man's shoulder. Bruce, put your hand on Helen's waist. Get closer, so you can almost feel the other person's heart beating. Then gently grasp your other hands with flat palms. Don't interlace your fingers, or you will be unable to twirl her.' I want to be twirled, so we do as Erik says. We are in a ballroom in a recently refurbished castle in the Bavarian Alps, learning how to waltz. I'm 63, my husband is 66. Erik Dietrich, who moves like water over stones, is our instructor. As a teenager, he says, dancing saved his life. Now, at 27, he works as a dance teacher in a high school in Munich. He wants his pupils to enjoy the experience, to feel the joy that comes from moving to music, to have conversations with our bodies. To 'make the connection.' The ballroom (which doubles as a concert hall) is part of a hotel, spa, and cultural center called Schloss Elmau. There are many reasons why one might choose to vacation here: the views; the hiking; the Pilates and yoga classes; the eight swimming pools, most outdoors and heated even in the winter (I swam in the salt water pool with steam rising during a magical March snowfall); the concerts and lectures; the eight restaurants, one with two Michelin stars and another devoted to fondue. The G7 met here, twice. You might remember a famous alfresco photo of Angela Merkel, standing with her arms outstretched in animated conversation with a rapt Barack Obama lounging on a bench. But none of that has brought me and my husband to Schloss Elmau. The resort periodically offers weekend-long dance intensives and we have come to twirl! And, as Erik says, to make a connection—in my case, to some family history. You see, this isn't my first waltz lesson. Five decades ago, my grandmother, a Jewish refugee from this part of Middle Europe, taught me the dance. After my grandfather died, she moved into a studio apartment in the same Greenwich Village building where my family was subletting a one-bedroom apartment. Later, when we moved to the Upper East Side, she moved in with us. She had no money of her own and she was lonely. We ended up sharing a bedroom for much of my childhood, and well into my teenage years, until my sister went to college, and Grandma got her little maid's room behind the kitchen. I remember one afternoon in the early years when Grandma was lying on her twin bed with her eyes closed, as I read a book sitting up on mine. The book's main character had been to a party. I asked her, 'Grandma, what's a waltz?' Her life had been hard. She had lost so much: her mother to cholera, a brother stolen by the Russian army when soldiers invaded in what was then Austro-Hungary during World War I. When she was 18, her father sent her alone to a brother in America and she never saw any of her relatives again—most were murdered in the Holocaust, except her youngest brother who escaped to Palestine as a teenager. She met and married my grandfather, a Russian refugee, and they owned a laundry. He washed the clothes and she did the mending and ironing. By the time she and I ended up as roommates, Grandma, now in her seventies, had lived a life she'd never expected as a child. To cheer herself up, she liked to talk about her youth—climbing a cherry tree in her white graduation dress because she just had to have this one gorgeous cherry, ripping the dress her mother had hand-sewn for her on the way down. She sounded so high-spirited to me; her life seemed so magical before the wars swept her whole world away. She was educated, too, which was unusual for a girl in those times, and a Jewish one at that. She could read and write in seven languages. She was an expert seamstress and embroiderer, and she took dance lessons, which she loved. I was a dancer, too! Not social dancing, like her, but ballet and modern. As I read my book, I fantasized about the parties she must have attended at school. The muscle memory was still encoded in her body. She had rhythm and grace. Her grief and loss had not stolen this from her. Now, she was heavy-set, you could even say lumbering. But when I asked my question, she got up and began to slowly demonstrate by circling around my bedroom. One-two-three, one-two-three…her arms orbiting a phantom partner. I laughed when I saw her—she wasn't exactly an active senior, and she had neither a bra nor girdle on under her house dress. But then I recognized she could really move. The muscle memory was still encoded in her body. She had rhythm and grace. Her grief and loss had not stolen this from her. 'Pussycat,' she said, 'Come try.' I walked over and she put her arms around my waist and shoulder and began to hum, some waltz-y type music from her memory that I didn't know, as she spun me around our bedroom. We were both so happy. I have continued to dance ever since, taking ballet and jazz classes well into my forties and since then barre class every day and a lot of yoga. Dance has sustained me my entire life. But before we'd met Erik, that brief lesson from my grandmother was the only moment that I'd ever truly experienced ballroom dancing. Now, I am going to be twirled again. Eric first puts on 'The Blue Danube' by Johann Strauss and then 'The Second Waltz by Dmitri Shostakovich'. He tells us to hold each other and move naturally, so Bruce and I sway side-to-side. He teaches us a two-step first and then the box step. Fun, but not what we'd come for. 'I want to swirl her around the room,' Bruce had said, when Erik had originally asked us for our goals. We keep knocking into one another. We laugh at our own clumsiness, and Erik laughs too. He is so glad that we are enjoying ourselves. Erik teaches us 'the lady turn,' where Bruce spins me under his arm, and then we two-step away from each other and he spins me back to him. Maybe it is the altitude, maybe it is the romance of it all, but by the time Eric puts on Elvis Presley's 'Can't Help Falling In Love With You'—also in ¾ time!—we are both breathless. And we are waltzing. After waltz class, we retreat to Schloss Elmo's luxurious hamam, the largest one outside of Turkey. Two lovely masseuses, both wearing bathing suits, introduce themselves, the man assigned to Bruce and the woman to me. Soon we are naked, scrubbed, and massaged in foam on the same heated stone. My attendant even washes my long hair. Bundled up in towels, we are brought into a lounge area where we are poured tea and fed dates and Turkish Delight. Our limbs are butter. I have never felt so relaxed and blissful. Maybe it is the altitude, maybe it is the romance of it all, but by the time Eric puts on Elvis Presley's 'Can't Help Falling In Love With You' we are both breathless. And we are waltzing. The next day, Bruce and I continue our dancing intensive. This time Erik partners Bruce, to show him how to lead. Then he takes me in his arms, teaching me to step forward when he steps backwards, and that if I angle my body some, and step between his legs, we can begin to make those big giant turns Bruce was aiming for. Faster and faster we twirl, in great big sweeping circles, the smile on my face so big it hurts. 'This is what it felt like with my grandmother,' I say. Bruce breaks in and we try it together, cracking up as we go. Erik is delighted. He says, 'If I am still dancing when I am 70, I know I will have lived a good life.' I tear up at that, because that is around the age my grandmother was when she and I danced together. It's my hope, too. To never stop dancing. Originally Appeared on Condé Nast Traveler The Latest Stories from Condé Nast Traveler Want to be the first to know? Sign up to our newsletters for travel inspiration and tips 45 Abandoned Places Around the World That You Can Visit The Cheapest Nicest Hotels in Paris The Women Who Travel Power List 2025
Telegraph
13-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
I put my children in an ‘extreme' German kids' club
Linn, another parent observing from the back of the 'edutainment workshop' at Schloss Elmau, leaned forward. 'Amazing how quietly they sit,' she whispered with a Scandinavian lilt. 'Such little kids. It's the atmosphere, isn't it? The room.' The room, smelling faintly of teak oil and featuring bookshelves up to the ceiling, reminded me strongly of higher education. Dappled sunlight filtered through the tall windows. At the front, cheery Ulrike Sauerhöfer began the introductory PowerPoint for the week-long Manga Workshop. Amid the 12 children aged between six and 10 were my own two: attentive Ada (eight) and Rafe (six), already sliding off his chair. Perched on a leather sofa worn by decades of fidgeting parents caught between love and onrushing spa appointments, I evaluated the impulse – surely sadistic – that had led me to book my children into a university seminar for their spring holidays. They had only themselves to blame, I reasoned. As they'd grown older, they'd become less compelled by the soft play/abstract expressionism/forest school themes of kids clubs gone by. Any good parent would have done as I had: bundled them off to a 'luxury spa and cultural hideaway' in the Bavarian Alps that offered IT and philosophy workshops for children (while mostly just talking up the infinity pools). 'For our clientele, it is normal life,' laughed Dietmar Mueller-Elmau, the hotel's tall, silver-haired owner, when I asked him whether Schloss Elmau's workshops for those aged six and up were at all 'extreme'. Normal life? If you're considering a career change at 40, maybe. But then again this is Germany – maybe this really is the norm? 'No, it is not normal,' Stephanie, clad in the same navy-blue insulated Moncler coat as her two children, assures me in a clipped German accent. 'The workshops are a higher level than anywhere we've been to.' A little light is shed after exploring the hotel's history. Schloss Elmau was founded in the early 20th century by Mueller-Elmaur's philosopher grandfather as a kind of spiritual wellness retreat in a secluded Alpine valley, with added dancing and dogma. Today, Mueller-Elmau has dropped the dogma and turbo-charged the music programme. Guests enjoy (or encourage their reluctant six-year-olds to enjoy) more than 200 concerts a year, often performed by Grammy-winning talent. While we're staying, superstar jazz trombonist Nils Landgren is in residence with a coterie of Swedish musical talent (Linn, it transpires, is the girlfriend of a Swedish pianist). In return for their room and board, Linn's boyfriend tickles the ivories of one of the hotel's seven Steinways. The stars dithering over the afternoon cake buffet aren't exclusively of the musical sphere though. England manager Thomas Tuchel is a Schloss Elmau regular, and a guest whose expertise Mueller-Elmau has tapped for the hotel's popular summer football programme. A visiting chess champion advised for the thrice annual Chess Academy, while PhD students from the Technical University of Munich teach the new Creative with AI Workshop (while also analysing, for their own research, how effectively the children bolster their cynicism against chatbots). Sauerhöfer, the published writer and illustrator teaching the Manga Workshop, is another Schloss Elmau regular, having taught there for two decades (she hit it off with Heidrun, Mueller-Elmau's wife, the architect of the workshops). However, despite Sauerhöfer's attentive, upbeat style, Rafe was now so close to the ground that he had almost automatically enrolled himself in the Zoom Photo Workshop one floor below. So, my energetic six-year-old preferred watching Pokemon to drawing it. But launching arrows into the scaly haunches of charging T-Rexes projected onto a basement wall, while being tutored by German champion archer Christian Kuffer, was right up his street (as it was for all four of us, actually). The next day, Rafe built on his experience when we walked with our bows to the outdoor targets (in winter, families can shoot by torchlight), the gentians like drops of ink in the grass. Beyond the Kids Club, teachings – both intentional and serendipitous – are available throughout this exclusive, sprawling property. In the Finnish sauna, family bonding was measured in beads of sweat, before testing our mettle in the crystal clear Ferchenbach stream; its gurgling an audible accompaniment to the nightly moon glow of the snowy Wetterstein peaks visible from our balcony. Indeed, with its spacious twin hotel buildings (unified by serene eastern-influenced interiors) and six luxurious spas, it's little wonder that Schloss Elmau has welcomed the dysfunctional clan of the G7 twice, in 2015 and 2022. As Mueller-Elmau observed dryly, 'There's enough space to get away from one another before you all have to meet up for dinner.' Returning to my room after an evening of jazz piano (Swedish) in the Al Camino bar, I passed the West Wing in the original Hideaway hotel, where Barack Obama has stayed. In a brightly lit gallery on the first floor, a family in silhouette tore breathlessly around a ping pong table, and I marvelled at the effortlessness of familial relationships under the right conditions. If you can't find those conditions here, you haven't fully studied the hotel's weekly colour-coded activity publication. As Mueller-Elmau put it during a tour of the hotel's numerous adult-only spaces, 'You rent a house in the south of France, what are you going to do? Go for a bike ride, eat, go for a swim, that's about it.' He spread his arms. 'Here, there is a sense of possibility. A place to let your kids roam free.' On our final morning, walking to pick up Ada who was adding the finishing touches to her manga portfolio, I understood my impulse to bring them here. On holiday, as parents, we want to alleviate the burden of being the imperfect teacher, but we can't accept any old stand-in. Parental love is extreme, obsessive, all-consuming – it's normal life. Inside the workshop room, a glut of parents in colourful spa robes hovered, wallowing in parental pride. Sauerhöfer was responding to a floppy-haired child in a too-large Cambridge University-emblazoned sports coat about what came first, Pointillism or Impressionism. Amid this, Rafe slipped in behind me, quietly picked up some paper, sat, and began to draw. Essentials Chris Allsop was a guest of easyJet, which flies from Bristol to Innsbruck from £27 one-way, and of Schloss Elmau, which offers double rooms from £239 (€280) per person per night on a B&B basis. This includes yoga, sports and activity programmes, access to the six family and adult spas, admission to cultural events, participation in the Edutainment Workshops, plus soccer camps and supervision in the kids and creative club. Europe's best kids' clubs for high achievers Penha Longa Resort, Portugal Future Rory McIlroys should descend on this resort near Lisbon, which delivers clinics and workshops across the resort's two courses, including the highly rated Atlantic Championship Course. Doubles from £242 per night, including breakfast Rixos Sungate, Turkey A well-rounded experience awaits at this resort in Antalya, where Lego robotics, ceramics, junior-chef sessions, a football academy, and more are on tap at Rixy Kids Club. Standard doubles with a mountain view from £271 per night, on an all-inclusive basis with free access to the Land of Legends Theme Park Nobu Hotel Marbella, Spain Enliven your teen's break here by booking up extracurricular gems such as sushi-making and DJ training. Doubles from £561 per night, including breakfast Sani Resort, Greece Young environmentalists will likely enjoy a multi-layered eco-focused offering that includes engaging with local NGOs. There's also tennis and football coaching, as well as the Bear Grylls Survival Academy. Doubles from £200 per night, on a half-board basis Rome Cavalieri, A Waldorf Astoria Hotel, Italy A useful immersion for future Classics scholars, the kids club at this hotel even offers gladiator training, during which children aged seven and up get the chance to summon their inner Maximus (part of the hotel's Italy immersion package, which also includes pizza-making and hat-crafting).
