Frauenhotel
by Becky Tan

The Hamburg English-speaking team stayed at Intermezzo Frauenhotel, a hotel for women just five minutes from Potsdamer Platz. There are 17 rooms for 35 guests in single and double rooms, some without toilets, but all with lavatories and showers. One room is equipped for physically handicapped and there is a children’s play room. There are no hotel personnel on the premises at night or on weekend afternoons. Guests have their own keys and are independent, which makes this more like an apartment house than a hotel. The rooms have no TV, telephone, or internet access. Prices start at EUR 47 with special rates for two-, three- or more days and EUR 6 for a breakfast buffet.

In 1999 Barbara Landvogt, Silvia Woller and Sabine Stolz searched for a likely site for a small hotel, having met through their children. They gained experience in cooperation when they established a Kinderladen. After the children grew up, the former dental assistant, legal aid and masseuse set up their hotel. They chose a ground-floor office space which ran the length of an apartment house. Neighbors have associated the Frauenhotel with a brothel, a house for battered women and a home for lesbians. None of these three categories were true to the hotel or to the owners themselves. Simply, they wanted a stress-free hotel and “women only” sounded like a good beginning with some advantages being no soccer rowdies and no need for extra toilets for men. Male children up to age 12 are welcome. During this Berlinale it was full of film people, happy for an inexpensive hotel central to most of the action.

INTERMEZZO Hotel für Frauen
Gertrud-Kolmar-Str. 5
10117 Berlin-Mitte,
Tel. 030- 22489096
Fax 030-22489097
www.hotelintermezzo.de