Reading: Jugendherberge notice, price table and quiet hours
You are on a Year 11 class trip and the teacher gives you this notice from Jugendherberge Alte Mühle. You must brief the group before they pay.
Notice: „Anreise: 15:00–18:00. Abreise: bis 10:00. Frühstück 7:00–9:00. Abendessen 18:00. Ruhezeit: 22:00–7:00. Zimmer: 4-Bett-Zimmer. Preis: 32 € pro Person pro Nacht, inklusive Frühstück. Abendessen: 8 € pro Person pro Abend. Fahrrad: 5 € pro Person pro Tag. WLAN nur im Aufenthaltsraum.“
A classmate, Tom, says: ‘Great - dinner is included and we can arrive at 20:00 after the football.’ Another asks, ‘So we must stay in our rooms after 22:00, right?’ The group has four students and will stay two nights, with dinner both nights and one day of bike hire.
1. Tom says dinner is included and the group can arrive at 20:00. Identify both errors and quote the notice as evidence.
Read the worked answer
Tom is wrong twice. First, inklusive Frühstück means breakfast is included, not dinner. Dinner is listed separately: Abendessen: 8 € pro Person pro Abend. The notice does not say inklusive Abendessen or Halbpension. Second, Anreise: 15:00–18:00 gives a check-in window ending at 18:00. Arriving at 20:00 is outside that window; it is not covered by the word Anreise.
The judgement call is to separate what is included from what is merely available. The price line mentions breakfast; the dinner line gives a price per person per evening. A reader who sees Abendessen 18:00 might confuse the meal time with inclusion, but the time is not a price condition.
2. Calculate the total cost for four students for two nights, with dinner both nights and one day of bike hire. Show each part and explain why breakfast is not added again.
Read the worked answer
Accommodation: 4 students × 2 nights × 32 € = 256 €. Dinner: 4 students × 2 evenings × 8 € = 64 €. Bike hire: 4 students × 1 day × 5 € = 20 €. Total: 256 + 64 + 20 = 340 €.
Breakfast is already inside the 32 € per person per night because the notice says inklusive Frühstück. Adding it again would double-count it. The phrase pro Person pro Nacht applies to the room rate; pro Person pro Abend applies only to dinner; pro Person pro Tag applies only to the bike. The arithmetic is simple, but the mark depends on attaching each price to the right unit and not treating ‘half board’ as automatic.
3. Does **Ruhezeit: 22:00–7:00** mean the group must stay inside their rooms after 22:00? Explain what the notice actually requires and why the other reading is an over-interpretation.
Read the worked answer
No. Ruhezeit means quiet hours, not room arrest. From 22:00 to 7:00 the group must keep noise down - no music, shouting or games in the corridor. The notice does not say im Zimmer bleiben or Zimmer verlassen verboten. The group may still use the Aufenthaltsraum, provided they are quiet, and the WLAN note shows that the lounge is a shared space.
The over-interpretation comes from seeing Zimmer in the previous line and assuming the quiet rule applies only inside rooms. The word Ruhezeit refers to noise, not location. A precise answer distinguishes ‘be quiet’ from ‘be confined’, which is exactly the kind of boundary the reading task tests.