The Kilkenny Observer Friday 25 February 2022
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Travel & Leisure 1. GREEN ELEPHANT HOSTEL & SPA: MAASTRICHT, THE NETHERLANDS Winner of Hostelworld’s ‘Best New Hostel’ award last year, this is more than just a hostel; it’s a state of being — from the healthy juice at check-in and their vegan-friendly restaurant Serendipity to the interior Urban Forest and meditation room, you’ll be hard-pressed not to feel extremely chilled here. Dorm beds start at €30 a night and private rooms from €50.
Jabbed, boosted: so how safe is it to travel now?
2. WELLNESS HOSTEL 4000: SAASFEE, SWITZERLAND Wellness Hostel 4000 was the first of its kind in the world when it opened in 2014. This Hostelling International hostel in the glacier village of SaasFee shows swathes of ingenuity by combining low prices with luxurious modern wellness and fitness facilities. The sleek contemporary architecture matched with magnificent views of the mountains is beaten only by the 20,450 square-foot spa, featuring a Finnish sauna, bio-soft sauna, herbal steam bath, whirlpool, footbath, navel stone, hydromassage showers, and freezing fog. You’ll be fully catered to here with a fresh and regional menu at Bistro 4000, or lighter bites served in the hostel’s lavish lounge. 3. WELLNESS HOSTEL 3000: LAAX, SWITZERLAND Another incredible offering from Hostelling International, Wellness Hostel 3000 opened its doors in December 2020, ready to wow guests with views of majestic mountain peaks, with many rooms boasting a panorama of the 9,840 foot-high Alps. The spa area invites you to pamper yourself in the sauna, fire bath, herbal steam bath, adventure showers, sound room, and Kneipp pool. Skateboarders and snowboarders will be impressed by the largest halfpipe in the world found in the local ski area. Expect to pay 55 Swiss Francs ( €60) a night for a dorm bed. 4. WOODAH BOUTIQUE HOSTEL: COPENHAGEN, DENMARK This gorgeous boutique hostel is a prime destination for lovers of Danish design, rejuvenating yoga, and healthy food, with hygge vibes on tap. Winning Kayak’s Hostel of the Year in 2020, the Woodah Boutique Hostel aims to become the Soho House of the hostel world, and they’re not far off. From decadent soft furnishings and dedicated, personalised service, you’ll soon see that their little hidden gem goes way beyond the idea of a traditional hostel. At €40 euros a night for a dorm bed, you’ll be loathed to stay anywhere else in town after. 5. SPA HOSTEL KUNNONPAIKKA: KUOPIO, FINLAND Nowhere does wellness quite like Finland, a country with saunas in its DNA and an overarching love of nature. A great example of these values can be found at the Spa Hostel Kunnonpaikka in rural Kuopio, built on the banks of Siilinsalmi Lake, where a stay in one of the bright but cozy dorms gives you
7 European hostels that feel like a luxury hotel access to a gym, hot tubs, seven indoor pools, and a range of saunas. You can also rent bikes, canoes, and snowshoes to enjoy the terrain, whether it’s snowcovered or sun-drenched. Prices start at around €100 for the whole four-bed dorm room. 6. CAVELAND KARTERADOS: SANTORINI, GREECE A boutique hostel with a wellness ethos, Caveland Karterados is a complex of cave houses and terraces where you can join the owners for yoga classes, healthy food, and relaxation by their gorgeous pool, which is one of
the biggest on the island. The surrounding fragrant gardens have amazing views and scents with lemon, pomegranate, orange, pear, vanilla, and pistachio trees growing, while the homespun interiors are furnished with refurbished antique and local furniture, perfecting the boho shabby chic vibe. Caveland offers dorm beds, single beds, and private double rooms and is a five-minute drive from Fira 7. WAKE UP WELLNESS HOSTEL: BRNO, CZECH REPUBLIC
The Wake Up Wellness Hostel is a chic yet friendly property, just minutes from Brno’s central station and the charming old town. There’s one mode operandi here; to soothe guests with a disarmingly serene stay in one of the thoughtfully designed, elegant dorm rooms with the comRest beds and tastiest breakfast around. The adjoining spa offers authentic Thai massages that use aromatherapy oils to relax your mind, body, and soul. Your only complaint will be you couldn’t stay longer.
MILLIONS of people globally are now vaccinated, boosted and newly recovered from Covid-19 infections caused by the omicron variant. They have what some outside the medical community have labeled ‘super immunity’. And many are ready to see the world again. However, medical experts disagree about the level and length of protection jabs and booster or having had the bug confers. Risks of severe illness for vaccinated and recovered people are “low and ... unlikely to get lower,” said Dale Fisher, group chief of medicine at Singapore’s National University Health System. For these people, travel risks are now more about inconvenience than health, he said. Immunised travellers can still get sick during their trips, he said, or have their trips canceled upon testing positive for a pre-flight test. Fisher said travelling isn’t the Covid risk that it once was, because of how prevalent the Omicron variant is today, he said. “There’s nothing magical about travel; you’re not more likely to get [Covid] because you travel unless you’re going from a very low endemic area to a very high endemic area,” he said. But “there’s not many low endemic areas left in the world.” Some argue that vaccinations plus recovery provide more protection, Fisher said. However, he added, “you’re very well protected after two doses” of a vaccine, too. People shouldn’t let their guards down just yet, said Dr Patrice Harris, former president of the American Medical Association. “We are seeing hospitalisations reduced, but listen, we are still seeing 2,400 deaths per day in this country,” she said during an interview with CNBC Travel last week. “We are not at the end of this pandemic yet.” That doesn’t mean she discourages travel — Harris said she’s planning two trips to Europe this year. But she does recommend that people rely on “tried-and-true evidence-based practices,” such as vaccines, testing, masks, ventilation and social distancing. Dr Harris said people who are immunocompromised, or around others who are, should exercise more caution. Even though she’s vaccinated and boosted, she’s still careful for the sake of her 87-year-old father, she said. People who are generally healthy, have had three doses of a vaccine and recovered from omicron should feel secure to travel, said Stefanos Kales, a professor at Harvard Medical School. “Unless you really have some serious condition or some serious concern, and you want to travel, absolutely you should travel,” he said. “You should feel quite comfortable because what else, you know, is going to protect you better?” “Let’s face it ... it just really looks like [Covid] is not going to go away ever completely,” he said. “We have other coronaviruses, some of them are cold viruses and ... as bothersome as colds are we haven’t found the magic bullet for those or a vaccine. But in general, we live our lives despite them.” Prof. Kales believes it is time to “move on” from the pandemic. “I think it’s time to ... treat this as if we would have treated the flu or a cold,” he said. Professor Cyrille Cohen, head of the immunotherapy laboratory at Israel’s BarIlan University, said it’s too early to say that vaccinated and recovered people are fully protected. Like Prof. Harris, he’s concerned about the threat of new variants. He said until the situation stabilises, “I do believe that we still need to feel humble and cautious.” Travellers could be infected with a new variant — one that hasn’t been detected yet. “That’s how it started for a lot of people back in 2020,” he said. People with so-called ‘super immunity’ may experience less severe disease, he said. “But it is so dependent on the type of variant” that may emerge.
