Tropical Islands is, of course, a truly ghastly place: it’s tacky, it’s loud, it’s really fucking expensive and they give your kid a little wristwatch thing and you don’t know how much everything is gonna cost and then he goes and blows all the money on his wristwatch thing on ONE MEASLY WATER PISTOL or one blow-up dolphin and you just want to die because it already cost so much to get in and some of the people who go there kind of look like Neo-Nazis A LOT like Neo-Nazis but not the classy Beate Zschäpe kind, the really bad ones, and they have bad hair and those Old Skool mullets, not those sexy, slutty, hipstery mullets but the Old Skool ones and the kids all have bigger breasts than you, even the nine-year-old boys, ESPECIALLY THE NINE-YEAR-OLD BOYS – they have these huge, wobbly tits – their tits literally have cellulite on them – and it is really annoying how you have to pay extra for your kid to go on those Bobby Car things. Also, it’s totally fake and artificial and stuff.

HOWEVER it is literally the most fun you can have in Germany without taking Class A drugs and in fact taking Kristina Schröder to Tropical Islands and reenacting the Rihanna video with her and a pail of cocaine is literally one of the main items on my bucket list – German people, pail is an Olden Days word for bucket, I said pail instead because I didn’t want to use the word bucket twice in one sentence, that is how fucking classy I am.

The following things in that shitty F.A.Z. hatchet job were blatantly glatte Lüge, they were so glatt you could go sledging on them:

1) Das Frühstück gibt es im Thai-Haus, im Restaurant mit dem hübsch sinnlosen Namen Jabarimba. Frühstücksbuffet mit Masse satt, süßer Konzentratsaft, Dosenobst und Volleiomelett aus dem Tetrapak

She tries to make it sound like the breakfast is crap. I’ve had FAR WORSE breakfasts in hotels in Germany, a million times worse. It is a perfectly fine breakfast and she just wrote that to be bitchy and spiteful.

2) Als ich der Barkeeperin sage, ich hätte meinen Gin Tonic lieber ohne Gurke, schaut sie mich an, als hätte ich ihn mit Leberwurst bestellt.

She tries to make it sound like the bartender is being all bitchy and judgemental about the Gurke in her G&T. I know this is a lie, it is a direct falsehood. The customer service in Tropical Islands is the best you will get anywhere in Germany, i.e. it is ALMOST OKAY. No, I’m being sarky, it is actually really good, they actually treat you with a bit of respect and even friendliness. They treat single mums/women of colour (me) as if we’re white men/with white men. They’re friendly and polite and definitely never besonders rude, even if you lose your wristwatch thing three times in a row. Maybe the barmaid was surprised at her not wanting a cucumber in her G&T, but she wasn’t the one being judgemental about it.

3) The bit about the people not enjoying the entertainment show

She literally made this bit up to be bitchy and make it sound like the people who go there are plebs. They were just being German, they’re not going to start waving their hands about and stuff, are they? If they did that, she’d say they were all drunk and embarrassing. She just wanted to say that everyone who has fun at Tropical Islands is a dick and so she scrambled around trying to find evidence for it and she lied and it’s pathetic to be honest. Just say you think they’re plebs because you have better taste than them, don’t make shit up.

The following things aren’t lies, but they’re really annoying:

1) Auch der Anspruch, ansatzweise etwas lernen zu wollen, hält keine anderthalb Stunden. Nichts ist mit lästigen Schildern beschriftet, kein Pflänzchen des immerhin größten Indoor-Dschungels der Welt sagt, wie es heißt, und die Vitrine mit den Dschungeltieren wartet nur mit allerknappsten Erklärungen auf. Das Volk soll konsumieren und nicht über irgendetwas nachdenken. Nicht einmal darüber, wie dieser Baum da heißt.

Oh, just google the fucking trees yourself you fucking spod. I bet you were the kind of kid at school who complained about not getting any homework on a Friday night.

2) Her being really judgemental about the typical Tropical Islands Besucher being this unintelligent, uneducated, mindless consumer Konsum junkie and even going so far as to JUDGE THEM FOR HAVING SLIGHTLY SNAZZY FILM-BASED HANDTÜCHER but then being all affronted that the gin isn’t some famous brand mark gin, like she’s used to designer gin yeah, the Hallenbäder she goes to normally only serve Bombay fucking Sapphire without any fucking Gurke in it and plus being all snarky because the waiter doesn’t know what the house wine actually is.

I also think the house wine bit is probably a lie BUT HOW DUMB DO YOU HAVE TO BE to be all like judgemental about people consuming things you don’t like (snazzy hand towels) and then all affronted about bad customer service when YOU want to buy some wine? Has she literally never noticed that the only difference between snazzy hand towels and posh wine is that she likes posh wine? Sometimes I think middle-class Germans lose the ability to think logically when they do their Abitur. IF KONSUM IS BAD THEN CONSUMING WINE IS BAD IF CONSUMING WINE IS OKAY THEN LET PEOPLE HAVE SNAZZY FUCKING TOWELS. Also, like, seriously? I do not want to judge this woman but what kind of person notices what kind of beach towels other people bring with them to the swimming pool? I have never, ever, ever, EVER in my life judged another human being because of their towel. Actually, this isn’t strictly speaking true, my mum went through this phase in the early 90s when she thought period blood was holy and totally not unclean and she left all these period bloody towels out in our bathroom and it was seriously embarrassing when I had friends over. But to get het up about a non-period blooded towel, just because it has a picture of Yoda on it? How observant would you have to be to notice that? You’d have to have these evil beady observant eyes like a hawk and this dispassionate mind and then this heart of cruel, dry, rocky stone. You’d have to have like some kind of prehistoric fossil type rock for a heart. Sometimes I just read these miserable moany bullshit articles by middle-class white Germans moaning about anything that people except for them find vaguely enjoyable – Hallowe’en, Slutwalk, Tropical Islands, etc, and I just think THESE PEOPLE HAVEN’T SUFFERED ENOUGH AND THEY FEEL GUILTY. We need to punish them for the Holocaust more. It’s what they want. Otherwise they literally would not give a shit about anyone else’s towels.

3) Der ideale Tropical-Islands-Besucher liegt offenbar gerne herum, am liebsten paarweise oder im Familienverband auf Liegen oder Liegestühlen.

EVERYBODY LIKES LYING AROUND ON LIEGESTÜHLEN THAT IS WHAT LIEGESTÜHLE WERE INVENTED FOR. Actually to be honest it’s what human beings were invented for.

You don’t need to slag Tropical Islands off. It is, essentially, a huge swimming pool. If you don’t like it, don’t go there. That’s all.Wie um Himmels Willen könnte es weit kommen?  Don’t be a dick. The Tropical Islands might be tacky as fuck but you’re judging people for their beach towels which is literally the tackiest thing to do in the world. Grow up.