Tropical Islands: the aircraft hanger water park.
Experience the Sublime in Brandenburg.
In 1996, a group of German business people, engineers and scientists thought they’d hit on the next big thing in logistics: huge, helium airships for transporting extra heavy loads. The dream was that they would lift even oil rigs and wind turbines into place at hard-to-reach locations.
Of course, they’d need to be large airships, and large airships need a large hanger. In fact, as it turned out, only the air hanger to end all air hangers would do.
By 2000, they’d built it — just outside of Berlin in Brandenburg state on an old military airfield. Spacious enough for two of their planned airships to be maintained at once, it’s the largest free standing hall in the world. It cost $110 million, but received heavy subsidies from the federal government — during his visit, Chancellor Schröder was spotted taking giant gulps of Kool Aid.
But regardless of deep pockets and friends in high places, the concept turned out to be an air bridge too far. Just two years later, the company went bust, with only one prototype airship built.
So, how to avoid white elephantiasis? Turn the whole thing into a water park, naturally.
Bought by a Malaysian conglomerate in 2003 for just 20% of what it cost to build, the airhanger became the ‘Tropical Island’ resort within a year.
But even with the commercial purpose changed, the maximalist spirit of the original venture lives on. The cavernous space has been transformed into a warren of lagoons, slides, saunas, pizza imbisse, merch stands and culturally inappropriate recreations of ancient sights (um, is that the Angkor Wat next to the naked saunas?).
A nod to the building’s history comes in the form of a hot air balloon, providing rides to the hanger’s highest reaches for a mere twenty something euro. And then there’s the 47,000 square foot pool with artificial beach, pirate ship and Truman show-esque painted horizon.
The piece de resistance for me, though, is the genuine rainforest at the resort’s centre, with around 50,000 plants including 600 species where live animals are allowed to seemingly roam freely. Let me tell you, you haven’t lived until you’ve stumbled over a tropical bird while trying to fix your towel post dip.
Tropical Islands must be doing something right.
Everywhere you look are eastern German and Polish families seemingly having the time of their lives. Lad dads getting in the beers, teens clutching the waterproof pouches protecting their phones, and countless kids exercising their apparently god-given right to scream without reproach.
It wouldn’t be my idea of a holiday, but it’s clearly popular. The waterpark gets 8,000 visitors a day even though a tageskarte comes far from cheap. And a significant amount of floor is space given over to whole neighbourhoods of themed accommodation — native American, medieval Europe, Caribbean pirates — for people who like their overnight stays kitsch as fuck.
I can’t pretend I’ll be going back any time soon. But it’s not often I get to experience the sublime in Brandenburg. And standing in the middle of that rainforest, looking up at the impossibly large, impossibly empty volume of pure space above me, with the domed ceiling extending across my vision, that’s kinda what it felt like.
Kudos.
