Our stay in Josty’s apartment was for the most part, great. Super easy check in and check out, and was very relieved to find out that we were able to check in at 8am after travelling approximately 25 hours from Australia. Josty is super reliable via text or whatever medium you use to contact him, and the apartment was very clean when we found it.
Location was amazing too, and it’s in a fantastic buzzing courtyard that was always a super easy reference point to and from each respective location.
However, the apartment has two fundamental flaws. It is not really acceptable for Airbnb’s in mainland cities to have no air conditioning nowadays. I mean, the whole week we were plagued with a heat wave (unlucky timing) but regardless, accomodation should always act as a place of refuge, not somewhere you want to avoid going. To say the apartment was a sauna is an understatement. It was plainly insufferable. Because it is in a large courtyard, there is absolutely no breeze or airflow, so leaving windows open does nothing. On days that it was 39 degrees we had to wake up early and find air conditioning (which was EXTREMELY difficult in this city) and for the life of me I simply cannot understand why. We ended up spending the day at either soho house pool or ka de we department store, but due to the sun only setting at 10pm, surviving the entirety of the day was a struggle. I know that this heat is unusual for Berlin but there seriously needs to be measures taken to make accomodation a place people can feel relaxed and comfortable, not stressed and bothered. I thank Josty for bringing us two fans (the second one delivered by a random lady without any prior notice) but as everyone knows, fans only blow warm air onto you and don’t really alleviate the rest of the apartment which was incredibly humid, with droplets of sweat forming every time we left the vicinity of the fans airflow. While we had two fans blowing on us, there are no sheets (only thick doonas) and behemoth pillows that ruined our necks every single night. I’m not usually one to comment on bedding and pillows as I’ve been through it all - slumming through hostels for years prior to this... but this pillow situation was impossible to ignore. I do remember reading reviews prior to booking this that commented on the bed and pillows being uncomfortable, but I didn’t pay much attention. Funnily enough when we requested for new pillows (ones we hoped wouldn’t send us to a chiropractor) we came back to two pillows that were, the EXACT SAME. I appreciate the gesture however it was quite futile. I asked some of my friends living in Berlin whether they had normal pillows and they too, complained about this strange pillow epidemic... so maybe it’s just a weird German thing, I honestly don’t know. Anyway besides those two frustrating flaws with the accomodation everything else was perfect - perhaps include more towels for guests as we had to take cold showers at 20 minute intervals so as you can imagine, we exhausted the supply on day dot. Anyway I really enjoyed the stay but I think that for the price Josty is charging, air conditioning and normal, comfortable bedding should be a prerequisite.