Loiserhof

I’ve been coming to Elmen for 10 years, and nowhere else has made me feel as unwelcome as Loiserhof. We had much better contact with the neighbor across the street than with the hostess or host family. We stayed in the main house. It rained a lot during the first few days, so I asked grandpa if they could turn on the heating to dry our clothes. Then the internet suddenly stopped working. When I asked about it, I learned they turn it off during thunderstorms, but nobody had let us know. We’re smokers, and often grandpa and grandma were using the bench in front of the house, so we had to smoke on a bench a few houses away. I understand it’s a working farm, but it’s hard to find any romance when a bulldozer spends hours scraping manure off the asphalt and you have to keep your windows closed. I was a German student, and people elsewhere usually try to speak clearly enough to be understood. Our hostess didn’t, and I’m sorry, but I don’t understand Tyrolean German. The tap water was yellow, the dirty oven wouldn’t close properly, and the numbers had worn off the stove knobs. Call me a spoiled tourist, but the other places I’ve stayed over the past ten years were all perfectly fine, and communication with the hosts was always smooth, pleasant, and warm. The last straw for me was expecting a celebration because I’d been coming to Elmen for ten years and my wife for twenty. Our hostess said it unfortunately wouldn’t happen because she’d been told too late or something. A previous hostess in the same village had apparently managed to arrange it.