This was singularly the worst Airbnb experience I’ve had. The owner was friendly and communicative. The apartment was quirky and ultimately adequate. But the neighborhood wrecked our week in Zurich. My husband and I arrived with our two children onto this dingy street only to find out it’s directly across the street from Red Lips, a strip club, which we were not aware of and weren’t thrilled about, but, ok, life goes on. The rear windows of the apartment look down on a restaurant loading dock and are mostly covered with trash. Around 11pm, a party started on one of the rooftops with really loud music - this continued until around 2am. We had all the windows wide open, simply because Zurich was suffering from a record heatwave (there are no air conditioners, no fans, so a tiny breeze is the best you’ll get on a 4th floor walk-up apartment). At 11:30pm, we endured some guy in an apartment downstairs getting into a domestic dispute with his girlfriend or wife, including screams, yelling and things breaking. That's not mentioning more street noise occurring at 2 or 3 with people yelling not caring anyone else. At 5am, the street noise started again with trucks and noise of bottles being thrown out and we were woken up. My husband left the apartment by 7am to go to work and stepped in poo that had been left on the front steps of the apartment building. There were many prostitutes walking around looking for business at that hour of the morning. This was our first night.
At this point, we realized that if we stayed here, we weren’t going to sleep all week. And we felt really misled about the noise level. To give you an idea, we measured the audio level in the apartment’s living room from a nearby bar at 85dB at 10pm at night using an app on my phone when one of the bars was playing music. There is absolutely no way to sleep with this going on. The description of this apartment borders on misrepresentation because it does not convey that it is almost impossible to sleep in this apartment during the summer, which is the primary function of the apartment. We communicated with Stefan who referred us to the description of the apartment and the code words that he used: “lively” is supposed to mean unacceptably noisy at all hours of the night. “Hipster” means strip clubs, bars and prostitutes, I guess. I am highly disappointed because it was clear from the beginning too, that I was coming to stay at the apartment with my two young children, and my friend and her young daughter who flew from Paris to meet us.
Speaking of the apartment, it’s passable but not amazing. It’s quirky all around, but the basics work alright. The master bedroom can probably accommodate people no taller than 5’ 8” or 1 m 70 cm tall. If you’re just a little bit taller, you’ll either end up with your ankles hanging off the bed--which was my case--or you’ll just rotate 90°--which is what I eventually had to do--and lay awake at night wondering when the noise will stop. The refrigerator is in the hallway. The kitchen is extremely awkward to cook in too. There are handmade decorations made of cardboard and papier mache in the bathroom, kitchen, bedroom, etc. The headboard for the master bed are made of cardboard painted white.
We left the apartment exhausted from lack of quality sleep for 7 days straight and highly disappointed by the misleading nature of this description. And I was upset that it was my first introduction to a city that has so much to offer. The last morning, my friend who was sleeping in a room with her daughter just above a very noisy corner bar, was almost in tears because she had not slept all night because of noise. Upon arrival, on the kitchen counter top, I found three sets of ear plugs. Unusual, I thought. I now understand why they were there. Sadly, they didn't even work.