We stayed in Ian's apartment for three nights. Already the communication was great and when we came there we immediately felt at home. We talked to Ian for a while and he gave us some tips for visiting the city and going out. We even ended up spending some time together.
The location is really good and you can leave the house by foot to get to the city center; which is great.
The shower in the basement sounds worse than it is. The apartment is on the ground floor and so you hear if someone is in the shower; like that you don't go stand in line and the way to the shower is not that far.
In general, we were happy to have a smaller apartment in the city center than a bigger one more outside of town where we would have to have taken the metro way more often.