You thank your lucky stars that your hotel let you check in early!
Actually, our hotel had listed a luggage room under amenities and we were planning to stow our luggage there for a few hours until we could check in, but having the opportunity to go straight to our room and unwind a bit before sightseeing was golden.
We're staying in the Atlas City Hotel. I booked it based on the price and proximity to the main train station, despite knowing that near the HBf there are such interesting enterprises as "Exotic World" and "Sexy (something-or-other)", not to mention at least 3 casinos. Being able to walk from the station to the hotel was far more attractive than the neighbors were off-putting. And I wasn't seriously concerned. I'd walked through the neighborhood back in 2004, day and night, and never felt the least bit nervous.
Because it's a budget hotel, our room is barely bigger than a cubicle. I was standing with my back against the wall to take this photo.
It's big enough, but just barely. The bathroom is almost as big as the sleeping area.
It looks sleek and nice, but this is the most inconvenient bathroom ever. The support for the shower head won't hold it properly and the spray is entirely directed at the wall unless you take the sprayer in hand. There is nothing remotely resembling a shelf to hold toiletries. They nicely provide a wall-mounted dispenser of generic hand-face-body wash... which shall never touch my skin. And it's a nearly zero-threshold shower... with an inadequate drain. I yelled at Nate for getting water everywhere and proceeded to do the same, despite my best efforts to be careful.
None of the lights worked when we first went up to the room. Nor did any of the outlets. We flipped all the combinations of switches we could think of to no avail. Apparently all those incomprehensible words that surrounded "Schlussel" (key) when we checked in were important. We needed to insert the room key into this box on the wall just inside the door to turn on the electricity in the room. No leaving lights on when you go out.
We also have a delightful church across the street that helps us keep time by chiming every 15 minutes and gives us a concert chorus of bells at 6 p.m. No extra charge.
Breakfast is not included, but is provided for an extra charge. Having learned my lesson in Berlin with Penninah, we took the breakfast. (Penni and I wandered for hours on a Sunday morning looking for a restaurant for breakfast, and ended up spending 3 times what the hostel breakfast would have cost.) It's typical for Germany except for adding scrambled eggs to the buffet, which I've never seen here before. Not gourmet, but certainly adequate.
Oh... and the bed is exceptionally firm. (Read that as hard.)
So this is our home-away-from-home for the first four nights of our adventure. Would I book this hotel again? Absolutely. It's clean, it's quiet (except for the bells), it has an en suite bath, it has beds... that's all I ask of a hotel.
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