“Interesting experience, but stay elsewhere until the castle becomes a real hotel.”
Having learned that Colditz Castle had been turned into a youth hostel, my brother and I ventured south from Berlin to check it out for a night. The castle (though it's really a palace) went from being a royal residence, to a hospital, to a mental asylum, to a Nazi war camp, to an old age home. These days, while being renovated, it's a museum, musical seminary, and hostel.
SERViCE: this is less a hostel than a large B&B. The staff vanished when the sun set. There is a free breakfast in the morning and there appeared to be a dinner service around 8pm (the sun set at 9). Although the place calls itself a "youth hostel", adults can stay here. While we were here, a family was occupying a few rooms down the hall. Adults simply pay about 3 euros more per day per person. The room came with its own bathroom, which was nice, since I was expecting a long walk down a dark hall.
VALUE: one night cost my brother and I a total of 57 euros (you pay per person, and we paid about 28 euros each) with all of the associated taxes and fees. It's cheap and the room we got was enormous, BUT there is no one to prep the room upon your arrival. The staff gives you sheets and you make the beds. Also, bring your own towel and soap. None are provided. And bring something to do. The town shuts down as though a demon-wolf prowled its streets at night.
SLEEP QUALITY: The beds were pretty comfy.
CLEANLINESS: Colitz only just opened as a hostel a few years ago, so the rooms are all new and clean.
SPA: none
FITNESS CENTER: none
Other:
TOURS: The castle runs a few tours every day, and there is a museum. Most of the tour and museum centers around its WW2 heritage. Since the castle is most famous for being the centerpiece of a few British war movies, many of the tourists are British, so there are English-speaking guides.
TOWN: The town is as picturesque as it gets, so you should wander around the twisting alleys. But as for food, good luck. There are a few bars and restaurants, but when we were there, they were all closed. The only places to eat were a couple of ice cream parlors at the town center and a hole-in-the-wall takeout Chinese Restaurant. So we traveled all the way from NYC to eat chop suey and wonton soup. However, they sold bottles of Radeberger for something like one euro. We got a bunch. Other than that the town was literally deserted.
SPIDERS: the rooms have no screen windows and some big ones got in. We don't kill spiders since they eat flies and mosquitoes, so we scooped them up with a notepad and tossed them out the window, which we then closed. However, when I say big, remember that I'm not an arachnophobe and still got a bit of a shock when one crawled out from under the pillow as I was making the bed.
ENGLISH: the staff spoke enough English to check us in and out and they wrote very well in their emails prior to our arrival when I made reservations. Asking for a place to grab a beer though was too much.
RESERVING A ROOM: make your reservation through one of the travelocity-esque hostel websites. There is almost no website for the castle and I made my reservations via email. This was time consuming and a little confusing because there was a miscommuncation regarding our arrival date. However, so few people were here that really a reservation was unnecessary. There were maybe ten guests for the 100-plus rooms.
In conclusion, I recommend making Colditz a day trip from somewhere else. It's an interesting place to visit (maybe even fun for some), but the whole area is totally dead and in the absolute middle of nowhere. With one of the only roads into town blocked for some repair work, my brother and I detoured literally down a dirt road that went through someone's field until we were able to find a paved street again.
This review is the subjective opinion of a TripAdvisor member and not of TripAdvisor LLC
