Ostel - Das Ddr Design Hostel Berlin

Would be nice if it wasn't for the bed bugs!

This place had an interesting retro decor, that lives up to the DDR theme that they are going for. The room was pleasant enough for a Hostel. Generally it initially met the expectations of what I was paying for. The location is good. Fairly close to many things, particularly the Ostbahnhof.

The room smelled like it had been smoked in every day for years, despite the no smoking signs everywhere. I was letting that slide until I found out that my room had bed bugs! I had lots of bites. Upon closer inspection, I found out that the mattress was infested, and I killed a full grown adult as it was crawling around on me. The room had almost all of the things you can look for when hunting for bed bugs infestation. Blood spots from the post-feed, bug parts in the mattress lining, bug dirt in the sheets and mattress crevices. It was all there. I understand that these things happen, even in the nicest hotels, and would not be leaving a scathing review if the situation had been appropriately handled. But in addition to the infested mattress, the staff seemed unconcerned. Which makes me think this is a regular problem, and that there is no protocol for dealing with it. The woman at the desk did not bat an eye at the dead bed bug I showed her. She offered me another room, in a tone that suggested I was being unreasonable. There was no apology, no offer of refund for the two nights I had already been there, no offer to pay for laundry, no offer of plastic bags to quarantine things. They didn't want to come look at the room to see where the bugs were. Those are all bad signs, and I left for another hotel minutes thereafter. I did get refunded for the nights that I would not be staying there, but had already paid for, so at least there is that.