Dalene Kooper

KEETMANSHOOP – Bernd Roemer, the former German radio announcer now settled in Aus, has described his media career as bitter years working for the then apartheid regime.

“We had to do what the government wanted back then,” the former radio announcer said.

Roemer began his media career in the early 80s and continued until 1993.

He dropped the mic and headphones when the government transitioned from the colonial administration to the new one. The old-timer dabbled in both radio and television, producing a magazine programme and working behind the scenes in the news section. “That conglomerate of stuff, there was no go. However, I then switched over to television and did news and magazine shows. I travelled the whole country,” Roemer said.

Roemer could not say if working in media was fulfilling.

Rather, he hastened to say, he enjoys learning about life as he goes.

“It’s the university of life,” Roemer said.

Roemer possesses a lively and inviting personality. He currently operates the only hotel in Aus, down south in the //Kharas region, and ventured into tourism during the transition from the previous administration to the current one. Roemer decided to settle in Aus, describing the settlement as ‘food for the soul’. “These wide-open spaces, these granite rocks and mountains – they talk to you. Food for the soul,” he said.

He owned a couple of souvenir shops in Windhoek while working at the German radio service.

With the hospitality knowledge his wife possessed, they bought the hotel in 2006 through a project they were part of when the hotel came onto the market.

“And because my wife has learnt the hotel business in Germany, we were the couple destined to run the hotel,” Roemer chuckled.

The Bahnhof Hotel was nearly run-down, close to being a bar, when Roemer and his partners bought it.

History

He shared a brief history of the place, dating back to the early 1900s.

“It was constructed in 1906. Then it burnt down in 1948. It was rebuilt in its present shape and reopened in 1950. So, the top rooms, they’ve still got wooden floors. They date back to the 50s. The bar, the counter, and the case where the bottles are standing, we kept and maintained,” Roemer said.

The hotel plays a significant role in the lives of the local community in Aus. Each year, the hotel supports football tournaments and has bought football kits for a football team.

“We regularly support soccer; we donated soccer kits to them, and we once had to pay the salary of a local teacher working at the multi-purpose centre,” Roemer said.

Covid-19

Like most businesses, the hotel was hit hard during the Covid-19 pandemic, which brought the global economy to its knees. With most of his clients coming in from abroad, the Bahnhof Hotel had to close for seven months while bills were piling up. Roemer said it was quite hard to recover from that period.

When driving by the Bahnhof Hotel in Aus, one cannot help but notice the sign that screams, ‘For Sale, Owners Want to Retire.’

Roemer and his wife have been managing the hotel for 20 years and wish to transition into desert tours.

“Managing a hotel for 20 years is crazy business. It has been inspiring to see the progress we have made so far. The feedback from the community is positive, and that gave us the strength to keep going,” he said.

He assured us that he isn’t really retiring but will shift his energy to his desert tour business.

“I’m not going to retire into darkness; I have got another business where I will watch the sunset and the beautiful landscape of southern Namibia,” Roemer said.

He admits that lodges opening in the surrounding areas have brought stiff competition, stating that the lodges belong to the Gondwana group: “So they’ve got completely different possibilities to get into the market.”

Roemer still is not looking to leave the tourism industry behind; rather, he will continue with what settles his heart, driving tourists into the mountainous landscape near the edge of the Namib desert to tell the stories of the past. –dkooper@nepc.com.na