Gadling takes on the Null Stern (Zero Star) Hotel

by Annie Scott on


You may remember an article back in 2008 called Zero Star Hotel opens in Switzerland fallout shelter. Well, it took me a year and a half, but I managed to get there.

The “Null Stern,” or “Zero Star” Hotel is a cross between a hostel and an art installation by Swiss concept artists Frank and Patrik Riklin. The former air raid shelter retains remnants of its past purpose and challenges one’s perception of what “hospitality” means. There are ear-protecting headphones and heavy machinery, as well as sleigh beds and a sexily-dressed female butler. It was quite an experience.

%Gallery-93062%When I arrived at the Null Stern, I was greeted with the sign at right. Unfortunately, I don’t speak German, so with little idea what to do, I pounded on the door.

I was greeted by another guest, who said he’d call the butler for me. Having just traveled for over 24 hours to get to the small hotel, which is a quick walk from the train in Teufen, Switzerland, in the eastern highland region of Appenzell, I thanked him and headed inside hoping he wasn’t a serial killer. He wasn’t.

The underground cement interior was brightly painted and full of strange touches like chalkboards and hot water bottle heaters on a clothesline along the wall. A tiny reception area was indicated by a contraption reminiscent of an “ON AIR” radio sign and a couple of t-shirts saying “Null Stern: the only star is you” were for sale on a shelf.

A few minutes later, the butler arrived in the form of a glamorous Swiss woman with long dark hair and a very short skirt, as well as an adorable four year old child who I assume was her son. She gave me a key, assigned me a sleigh bed in a room of about six and informed me that there would be other guests that evening, but that she was putting us in separate areas for privacy. She asked me what I’d like to drink in the morning, and shortly after, she was gone.

After exploring the many bathroom stalls, the double shower and the locker room, which was harder to get a suitcase into than an overhead compartment (pack slim!), I headed out into Appenzell to explore the rest of the day. When I came back to the Zero Star that evening, my bed was a welcome sight.

The bed turned out to be more attractive than comfortable, but having stayed in many hostels, I certainly wouldn’t complain about this one. I availed myself of the shower as well, fortunately alone, and found it quite comfortable. That night, I slept soundly in the underground lair, waking only when a group of Russians passed through to get to their room. You can hear absolutely nothing from outside in the Null Stern.

In the morning, the butler and her son greeted me with the coffee I had requested, which I’m fairly certain came from a Keurig or something like it. I packed up my things, turned in my key and headed off into the real world again. When I stepped up the stairs into the morning light, I felt what perhaps many have felt when leaving a bomb shelter — like today was truly a brand new day.

Staying at the Zero Star Hotel is not only fun to tell your friends about, but it’s an interesting place to contemplate what you consider to be “hospitality.” Is it the cleanliness? The service? The beds or decor? The view?

If you had to spend some time in a bomb shelter, how would you make the best of it?

A stay at the Null Stern is around $30 for the highest grade of bed and includes a morning drink. While I wouldn’t say Teufen is the most “happening” town to visit, it’s very pretty, as is the surrounding area, and there’s a Spar for any toiletries or munchies you might need, as well as a couple of restaurants. Swiss Travel System train rides to local Appenzell attractions like the Appenzeller Cheese Dairy and St. Mauritius Cathedral are scenic and convenient.

My trip to the Null Stern was sponsored by Switzerland Tourism, but the ideas and opinions expressed in this article are 100 percent my own.

Exploring a Somali camel market

by Sean McLachlan on

Hargeisa, the capital of Somaliland, is built on an oasis used by nomads since ancient times. It’s been a center for camel and livestock trading for centuries. Hargeisa’s camel market, the Senlaola Hoolaha as it’s called in Somali, is a huge and dusty field a mile from the city center. Most of the day it´s used as playground by schoolchildren, but between 7 and 12 a.m. the scene is taken over by camels, goats, sheep, cows, their respective owners and of course prospective owners.

It´s a tumultuous place. The men are inspecting the animals or standing in groups sharing the latest gossip. The women have occupied a big part of the field for their own business of selling food to hungry traders. Some have traveled for days to sell their goods. The camel herders, who generally travel without any motorized transport, have been traveling for as long as two weeks and from as far away as the Ogaden region of eastern Ethiopia.

A camel can cost anything from 300 to 1000 dollars depending on its age, strength, and of course the buyer’s ability to haggle. All camels have been marked with the owner’s special sign to avoid any conflicts about ownership.

%Gallery-93036%Not everyone can learn how to recognize a good camel, says Hassan, who has been buying and selling camels and goats at Senlaola Hoolaha for twenty years. He enthusiastically shows me where to check on the camel’s back to know its age and health. You have to know how what to look for or you’ll get cheated, he says. Many camel herders give their camels extra water to make them look fatter than they really are, and only a well-trained eye can spot the difference.

To make sure that your bargaining doesn’t affect anyone else’s deals, an intricate technique of hand signs has been developed. The two businessmen put a shawl over their interlocked hands, and the bids are communicated by touch. The negotiations usually last from five to ten minutes but can take up to half an hour. The system might seem complicated at first glance, but the logic is simple and easy to learn. Every finger has a number. All the numbers from 1 to 9 represented. One, for example, would be described by grabbing the index finger at the tip. In the case bigger numbers are needed a zero can be added by grabbing a bigger part of the finger. One finger can therefore describe 1, 10, 100, 1000. Since both parties know the general price for a goat or a camel the use of zero is limited.

If you’ve ever been to the camel market at Birqash, near Cairo, you’ll probably notice one significant difference. While in Egypt you’ll constantly be followed around by hustlers, in Hargeisa you won´t be offered anything but long gazes of amazement. Here you are the only tourist around and you´ll soon find yourself, not the camels, becoming the main attraction.

(Note: the photos and much of the text in this post are the work of Leo Stolpe, a Swedish photojournalist who joined me on some of my Somaliland adventures. I merely edited the text and added a few things. Unfortunately, the program I’m using doesn’t allow me to put him in the byline. Check out Leo’s website for more great photos from his epic travels in east Africa.)

How much loot is this woman carrying?

by Annie Scott on

“Valuables? I don’t have any valuables.”

After putting together my post on Five sexy ways to carry your valuables safely, I was contacted by the PortaPocket folks to give their discreet, put-anywhere pockets a try.

PortaPockets are made from lightweight, coated neoprene, making them comfortable and hygienic, as well as very slim. They are made to be worn on the ankle, calf, thigh, arm and waist, but you can fit them almost anywhere (not that there are a lot of other places) and adjust them to your ideal size. The pockets themselves can be either threaded or velcroed onto the straps, and their gentle padding makes them serve as protective cases for phones and other valuables — even when you aren’t wearing them.

So now, the test. I tried on four filled PortaPockets with two different outfits. Can you see them?

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The PortaPocket items I tested cost $12.95 to $23.95 per set and can be purchased here.

Galley Gossip: 10 deep, dark, dirty, hotel secrets

by Heather Poole on

How dirty is your hotel room? Very. Surely you’ve seen those undercover news reports where investigators use a black light to show us things we never wanted to see like body fluids all over the walls and bedding. And what about the video clips of house cleaners unknowingly being filmed using the same rag they used to clean the toilet rim on the bathroom counter. One news team even caught a maid spraying Windex inside a drinking glass – and she didn’t wipe it off!

Now you understand why flight attendants never touch the duvet and wash out the mugs in scalding hot soapy water before drinking coffee! I have a flight attendant friend who covers the television remote with a shower cap and wouldn’t be caught dead walking around her bare feet. But hotels aren’t the only ones to blame. What about hotel guests?

Hotels are a lot like airplanes in that people do things they would never in a million years do at home, like leave wet towels all over the floor. Even I have a deep dark dirty secret that only happens at layover hotels. Two words. Tanning lotion. I’d hate to stain my own white sheets a slight shade of orange. I’ve heard rumors of flight attendants using coffee pots to clean pantyhose. Not so sure I believe that. But one flight attendant told me he uses the pot to heat up soup. I’ve tried using it to make oatmeal but it turned out completely inedible. Better doublecheck the bottom of the iron before pressing it against your nice white shirt since it may have been used to make grilled cheese sandwich. Did you know you can even heat up restaurant leftovers using an iron and a little tin foil? It’s true.

Well all of this got me thinking. Besides the obvious of course, I couldn’t help but wonder what other kinds of disgusting things people were doing in hotels rooms. So I sent out a tweet asking people to confess their deep, dark, dirty, hotel secrets. The responses came pouring in, many of which I’m unable to share here. We’re keeping it clean, people!Hotel patrons share 10 deep, dark, dirty secrets:

1. I let my kids run around without a diaper on. I’m a mother of three. Accidents happen.

2. I “borrow” the towels.

3. Bodily fluids and what not (toe jam) I’ve left on the underside of furniture, bottom of desk, and above top dresser drawer

4. Supergluing the toilet freebies to the counter and the hangers to the rack is fun.

5. Hide all the $5 water bottles in the closet. On the last day put them all back and then deny the charges at the front desk.

6. Towels under the door plus a hot shower equals a free sauna.

7. I don’t want any accidental stains in my home bathroom so I only color my hair in hotels.

8. Those huge mirrors with the bright lights are great for plucking, especially gray hairs. You can get a great back view with some of those door mirrors!

9. Booked a hotel room just so I could use the swimming pool for my daughters fifth birthday party. The hotel found out and was kind enough to let us use the conference room to eat cake and open presents.

10. I leave the bathroom a mess on purpose so the maids have to give it a good scrub for the next guest!


La Tomatina – The Lovely Tomato Festival

by Aaron Lenhoff on

Each week, Gadling is taking a look at our favorite festivals around the world. From music festivals to cultural showcases to the just plain bizarre, we hope to inspire you to do some festival exploring of your own. Come back each Wednesday for our picks or find them all HERE.

By the look of its name, “La Tomatina” might make you think of the word tomato, or in Spanish, tomate. That’s because La Tomatina is currently the largest tomato throwing event (as well as the largest food fight) in the world. Each year on the last Wednesday of the month of August, the Spanish city of Bunol erupts with a riot of dancing, drinking, fireworks and plenty of messy tomato-throwing fun. The name Tomatina is the word tomate altered with the ending “–ina” added to it to mean lovely. So La Tomatina is the lovely tomato festival.

The origin of La Tomatina was during another Spanish festival, Gigantes y Cabezudos or Giants and Big Heads in October, 1944. In this festival, people dressed up with giant masks over their heads. A group of kids wanted to join in and entered the area with their masks on. One of the kids somehow tripped and fell over and landed near a street grocery. Thinking some of his friends tripped him, he started to throw tomatoes at them. This started a food fight and soon not only the kids who started the fight were throwing food but also people from the festival as well.

Even Bunol city officials were provoked into the fray. The store owner eventually called police and the people were forced to all pay the grocer for the food they had ruined. The next year, the kids and others returned with their own tomatoes and repeated the fight but instead three weeks before the Gigantes y Cabezudos festival. Every year the festival grew until the entire town was celebrating on the last Wednesday of each August each year.

Want to participate in this one-of-a-kind Spanish food fight? Keep reading below to learn more.

Over time, La Tomatina has grown to a fight of over 30,000 participants, but not without plenty of government interference. In 1950, the regime of Francisco Franco deemed the festival without cultural or social value and labeled it a violent display of public vandalism. But people still tried to keep the Tomatina alive. From 1950-1954, La Tomatina was attempted every year but the police always intervened and fights always ended before everyone had thrown all their tomatoes.

In 1955, the supporters of the Tomatina from Bunol flooded the streets of the city for the Burial of the Tomato or “El Entierro del Tomate.” The people protested the ban of their town festival, which in five years had become an established tradition. They marched down the streets with a giant tomato in a miniature coffin towards the plaza of Bunol where the festival had always begun. It was a real funeral for the Tomatina. Funeral rites and songs were performed. In 1957, the government relented, agreeing to allow the festival only if the Bunol city government supervised the planning and execution of the event. The tradition of La Tomatina was in place.

The first event of La Tomatina is removing a tethered ham from a lard greased wooden pole. It takes many attempts and more than one person to reach the ham. After the ham is freed, the start of the annual fight is signaled by firing water cannons. Bottles and other objects that could injure participants are prohibited in the fight. Trucks full of tomatoes then roll down the roads of Bunol. People ride in the back and shower the people on the streets with ripe tomatoes. People on the streets then hurl the tomatoes among themselves. The tomatoes must be squashed with the hand before throwing them. A rule that is official but hardly ever followed is that clothes cannot be ripped off opponents. Tomatoes and tomato pulp are flung around and the whole area near the Bunol plaza is dyed pink. The fight ends an hour after the first water cannons with another blast.

In 2002, La Tomatina of Bunol was classified as an International Tourist Festival. The event is currently organized every year by two participants of the original Tomatina. La Tomatina really is an expression of freedom and a protest against powers that seem out of common people’s control. Both the powers of the individual and the group importance are enumerated by the event. The greased pole is an obstacle that everyone must help each other to overcome so that the festival can begin. The ham represents the powers that be. It is impossible to climb the pole alone. After the ham is down everyone is free to do mostly what they want with the tomatoes. Every tomato represents a choice and the choice of a person influences how the individual progresses.

The whole event is a symbolic representation of how the collective people have more power than any man, whether king or peasant, and that one man can not fundamentally rise over another permanently. It is a festival that shows that even the most oppressive of governments can never have ultimate control over the hearts and souls of its citizens. La Tomatina is an act of defiance to the powerful because within the fray of the fight, every man is equal, and ultimately, only armed with a tomato.