I know. This is a hostel. But even if one cannot expect a 5 star service, my experience here was way below par. Their service cannot be even called mediocre. I have been to quite a few hostels before, and this is certainly the worst one I know of. The following are some of the reasons why my stay here was so disappointing.
First of all, the cleanliness of the common areas. For a start, the shared bathroom gets nastier day by day. By the second day of my stay (unfortunately, I stayed here for a week), there was not any body wash left. The floor was always dirty, with a few pieces of toilet paper lying here and there. These small details made me wonder if anyone actually cleaned the bathroom.
However, probably the worst part of the whole hostel was the kitchen. This is one of the issues that will really make your stay miserable. The photos of the listing are very misleading because the kitchen was ALWAYS dirty, especially at night. The sink is usually filled with dirty plates, there are lots of flies all around the place, and no one seems to ever clean the kitchen floor. However, the fridge is maybe the filthiest part of the kitchen. I would not be surprised if someone told me that it has not been cleaned for years.
Moreover, food was stolen, not by mistake but systematically. It is really annoying to realize that the food you left in the kitchen the day before has been stolen once again by an anonymous freeloader. Apparently, I was not the only guest that experienced this situation. The staff is aware of this problem, but I never saw them trying to solve it.
I would like to say that not everything was so disappointing. I would like to say that at least the private rooms are ok. But they are not. Just by taking a look under the bed it is clear that no one has actually swept the floor for ages, and that no one cleans them periodically. This is all the more frustrating when one considers that the host is charging you a cleaning fee.
I must also add that no one, not even the staff, respects the sleeping hours. One can still hear a lot of noise at 12 am coming from the ground floor every day.
In addition to all of this, the staff wasn’t friendly at all. This is certainly not an outrageous sin, but one might say they were even hostile. So asking them to take care of things seemed like a no go to me. And then again, why should I ask for something they should be doing out of common sense?
In my humble opinion, the staff’s laziness is responsible for the poor conditions of the hostel. However, maybe it is unfair to blame the staff for the state of affairs in this hellish place. Probably they are underpaid and are not able to keep up with guests who refuse to clean after themselves. The owner's poor management of this place has enabled all the above mentioned issues. The owners of this hostel should reconsider if they want to offer a service or merely to make a few bucks out of a rundown house.