Gold

The food wasn’t great, and the room and bathroom were disgustingly dirty. For this price, that’s outrageous. The cleaning staff could use some training.

After my mother slept on the decision and worked out the costs, she got cold feet. The room was around €18,000, plus about €500 a month for care, not including medication, TV, and so on. We called the care home to cancel the deposit after only three days. A few days later they said Hungarian law didn’t require them to return it. The reservation was still valid until July 15, 2018, even though our deposit slip said July 31, 2018. They showed absolutely no goodwill. It was our mistake, of course, but I didn’t expect such a cold, unsympathetic response, especially when nobody had warned us it would be tough luck. I could have understood being charged for the viewing and paperwork. Instead, a lawyer said we had no right to a refund, and then the reservation period was shortened by two weeks. Taken together, it turned our first positive impression into a bitter, tearful disappointment. Taking €1,000 from a pensioner over an honest mistake and leaving him to deal with it without any consideration says a lot about the place’s social fabric. From a human point of view, this was a huge disappointment. My mother is nearly 80, active, and not yet in need of care. She speaks only broken German and is from Hungary. We’re looking for somewhere she’d get social and medical support, but finding a suitable place has been a long, complicated process. The language barrier here in Austria could leave her isolated despite being among good company. Moving into a care home is an incredibly difficult decision for both of us. An acquaintance told us about this retirement home, so we drove over on a Sunday without an appointment. There happened to be someone available who showed us a few rooms that seemed open and explained the options. The consultation was friendly and informative. There are two room categories: 16m² for 3.5 million HUF, and 35m² for 5.5 million HUF. The pensioner makes a “lifetime purchase,” so the rooms aren’t inherited and are returned after their death. They were very basic, and some weren’t finished. The 35m² rooms on the third floor could only be reached by an uncovered walkway across a roof terrace, and clearly weren’t complete. We were told the walkway would be covered, with construction expected to start by the end of 2018. The view was beautiful, the terrace was meant to be completed, and the welcome was friendly, so my mother reserved a room. They repeatedly said there was interest and few rooms available, though the rooms weren’t finished, and that they couldn’t confirm whether any in that category would still be available later. After a phone consultation with someone who could make the decision, we agreed to pay a €1,000 deposit on site. It was meant to reserve a room in the category we’d discussed until July 31, 2018, so my mother could move in by August 1 at the latest.