Hostelreview III

I know I know it has taken me a while to write all three of my hostel reviews. Sorry folks!

So the last hostel I stayed at was the grand hostel in Bremen.
It took me a wee while to get to the hostel, since it isn't exactly in the city centre. From the airport it takes easily 30 minutes by tram. It is basically on the other side of town. I am sure you could walk from the city centre but that takes at least a half hour as well.
Once I found the hostel (thank god for google maps) I realised that the hostel is in a weird half residential halt industrial area. Definitely not a part of town with bars, sights or even a park. It has the advantage though, that the is hostel rather quiet.

I wasn't too sure where the reception was, since the hostel has two buildings but the nice young receptionist was outside and quite helpful. He even knew my name before I told him, which is nice on one hand but also a bit worrying since that means that they don't have that many guest.

Since I had booked the cheapest bed my room was in what turned out to be the older of the two buildings. Again it was a 4 bed dorm, without en-suite. Really nice is the fact, that my room had plenty of space, lockers (with key this time) and even drawers and a cupboard kind of thing. It seemed to me that the building used to be an office building and they were reusing some of the furniture, which is a nice way of recycling things. They also try to pep things up by using "Fritzkola" crates as stools and tables. Not so nice were the carpet and the walls - they were just gross.

The bathrooms.... oh well. I am not sure if they get cleaned regularly, they seemed to have the same kind of stains for 3 days while at the same time there was no hand soap and no paper towels.
The showers are even weirder. You have two shower cabins in one bathroom. You can't lock the cabins, you can only lock the entire room. And since the cabin doors are transparent you'd want to lock the door unless you like to flash your bits.

There is a kitchen/common room with a fridge and such in the building but there didn't seem to be a hob or anything so you had to go to the other building. The facilities in the newer building seemed a lot nicer although it too seemed like an old office building. But the reception/lounge area is nice, with lots of space to hang out and they also sell beer and soft drinks and you can get breakfast for a fiver, which is okay for what you usually get in Germany. I didn't spend much time there, so I can't tell, if people use that area or not.
I really just used the hostel as a place to sleep, because it somehow didn't feel like a nice hostel. It might have been a combination of different things. One big part is certainly the people that hang out in and around the hostel, who mostly seemed to be middle aged male longterm guests who are looking for work in Germany and some of them were sitting outside in their car listening to music, drinking beer while another didn't even bother to go inside to use the loo but used what looked like a flower bad. And those guys really put me off.
And since the staff are only around until 10pm and the front door seemed to be open 24/7 anyone could have entered the hostel at any time. At least you can lock your room door from the inside.

As lovely as the staff was and as cheap as the hostel is, I don't think I would go back, if I was staying in Bremen again. The location, the condition the dorm and the bathrooms were in and the people staying at the hostel did not make it a pleasant stay.