This image does the rounds in those “building fail” clickbait lists:
http://www.viralnova.com/31-building-fails-gallery/11/
Does anyone know the story behind it? I’ve tracked it down to the Hotel Nürnberg, in Nuremberg, Germany (Street View link), but the hotel website doesn’t seem to mention this unusual architectural feature, and Google is silent on the matter. Is it just wackiness for its own sake, or is there any other reason?
Europe is full of such deliberate little quirks, which seem to have no purpose except to evoke a smile and break up normality. Holland and Spain seem to be full of such. A little odd in the extremely tidy and orderly land of Grrr-mans.
It’s just a small visual gag, not a feature to be publicised. The hotel is near the main railway station so I imagine it has a fair proportion of walk-in patrons, and it’s probably useful to catch their eye.
[tangent]So why is the building to the left of it (in Streetview) blurred out… the *entire *building?
If you go down the street and look from a distance, the blurred building is unblurred and looks pretty much like all of the other buildings in the neighborhood.[/tangent]
Some of those (in the OP’s link), like the stairs that go nowhere are clearly remodeling jobs where they took shortcuts. But some of them are hysterically “what were they thinking” situations. Like the toilet with a wall through it. I imagine the toilet was there first, and they decided to move the wall to make space for whatever was on the other side. But … why in hell not remove the toilet first? I can imagine the drywall guys laughing at that as they tape and sand around the commode!
I don’t know why this particular building is blurred out. But don’t forget, blurring in Google Streetview means nothing. Anyone can ask Google to blur their building in Streetview for any reason, and they’ll do it.
Probably the house’s owner asked google to blur it.
Germany is extremely privacy sensitive.
[Quote=The New York Times]
When Street View went online for Germany’s largest cities in 2010, the company said 3 percent of German households opted out.
[/quote]
So you’re more likely to find a blurred out house doing Google Street View sightseeing in Germany than in the US, but anyone can ask to have their house blurred out.
Way to go on the stereotyping and over-generalizing. Having grown up in The Netherlands (mostly in the Holland part), I can’t say I agree. Dutch architecture is very tightly regulated and there’s very little quirkiness that one could get away with.
Wow, I never knew that was an option.
Perhaps I ought to try it out. I’d be the only blurred house on my block, attracting suspicion no doubt.
Is it just me, or is it impossible to navigate around Google street view now?
Yeah, those boring Dutch 
