There are floors and floors of women; some wear nothing, others very little.
Men in groups can be seen wandering the corridors of mega brothels, some of which offer unlimited sex for a flat rate as little as 99 euros.
Welcome to Germany, where the brothel business is booming and sex is cheap.
More than 400,000 women work in German brothels, some so big they spill over several levels. Described as sex supermarkets, johns are lured with the promise of luxurious surroundings, unlimited alcohol and sex.
Since the Prostitution Act was introduced in 2002, Germany’s sex industry has boomed, making it a magnet for tourists. The Act was designed to improve conditions for prostitutes and to make it possible for them to get health insurance and social security while ensuring a safe workplace.
But has it helped or hindered sex workers?
That’s the question Australian reporter Amos Roberts wanted to answer when he took his “Dateline” camera inside this often secretive world.
In what he called an eye-opening experience, Roberts spoke to sex workers, brothel owners and street workers to find out what life was like for those involved in the sex trade.
In Germany, men may go window-shopping for sex in the spa town of Aachen; they can have unlimited sex with as many women they liked for 99 euros at a “flat-rate” brothel in Berlin; or they can visit Pascha, an eight-story “mega-brothel” in Cologne.
“There are dozens of women in the corridors, sitting on stools where men can walk around checking the women out,” Roberts said. “It does feel very much like a supermarket with groups of men wandering around the aisles, it’s very strange.”
Roberts found the industry generates around $20 billion every year, with an estimated 1.5 million German men using the services of a sex worker every day. Prostitutes all work freelance — instead of being paid a salary, they rent rooms from brothel owners who sometimes still don’t question their health or see proof of insurance.
The city of Stuttgart is home to luxury brothel Paradise, where women were required to be completely naked at all times while men walked around in bath robes.
Michael Beretin, the marketing manager for the Paradise brothel chain, has made a fortune from the brothel boom.
“Prostitution has always been a social need,” he said. “It wasn’t invented by anybody. We need to deal with it and make it manageable.”
But since the Act was passed in Germany, thousands of women had flooded into the country and competition had forced many sex workers to lower their prices, the report says.
“One brothel owner told me it can be hard to make money, and for every woman unwilling to perform something risky (such as not insisting on the man using a condom) there’s another willing to try it,” he said.
The journalist spoke to women who had moved to Germany and chosen the sex industry for various reasons and who claimed they weren’t being exploited, but he also spoke to a social worker in Aachen who had counselled many women trafficked from Eastern Europe and Africa.
“There are no hard figures, but some government estimates say around 90 percent of women are forced into sex work or are trafficked,” he said.
Roberts also said while many Americans and Brits found the concept of legal prostitution shocking, Australians tended to take a more liberal approach to sex workers and brothels.
“Australia has large brothels but nothing quite on this scale,” he said.
Sydney brothel Stilettos attracted headlines in 2011 over plans to build a $12 million, three-storey extension, which would have meant a combined total of 40 sex rooms and 21 waiting rooms. The city council rejected the plans, with Liberal councilor Shayne Mallard arguing it would have been too big and in an area where other brothels already existed. But the NSW Land and Environment Court overturned the council’s decision months later, imposing a limit of 1.5 patrons to every sex worker, limiting its capacity to 60 patrons at one time.
Meanwhile in Germany, some in the government felt things had gone too far in the sex industry.
Silvia Pantel, Member of Parliament for the Christian Democratic Union, said Germany didn’t want to become the world’s brothel capital.
“Nor do we want to create incentives to attract sex tourism to Germany,” she told Dateline.
She referenced the study tagging 90 percent of the country’s sex workers as having been forced into prostitution, and she demanded the government get tougher on the industry.
“At the time it was thought that legalizing prostitution would improve the prostitutes’ situation,” she said. “But that totally failed. We now see that meaning well does not mean doing well.”
This story originally appeared on news.com.au.