Simon Marquardt

Review of Generator Hostels Hamburg GmbH

The shared rooms are not cramped, but very spartan...

The shared rooms are not cramped, but very spartan. Only double beds and a large steel box per bed under the bed, which can be secured with a padlock, as a replacement for a cupboard. Table or chairs? Nothing. There would be enough space. The mattresses are spring core mattresses, I didn't know they still existed. Unfortunately not really comfortable. There are enough sockets in the room, in addition to several on the wall, one per bed as well as 2 USB-A charging ports.

The windows can only be opened a tiny gap, a proper exchange of air does not succeed. Noise-sensitive people have to leave the window anyway, traffic noise and singing drunks can be heard thanks to the proximity to the train station. It's quiet with the window closed.

Worst of all, however, are the bathroom cubicles in the room: there is a toilet cubicle and a shower cubicle, both so narrow that you can hardly turn in them. The sinks are barely deep and there is a shelf above them, so you can only spit toothpaste into the sink by twisting it.

The WiFi works for the most part, but is regularly annoying due to a captive portal that constantly requests a lot of personal data (and requests for unselected advertising consent), so the WiFi is not free but is paid for with data. IPv6 does not exist, and that is no longer acceptable in 2018.

The magnetic stripe-based key card system is incredibly annoying, the cards practically never work on the door to the house, sometimes on the elevator door and only after several attempts on the room door. A decent NFC-based system would be less frustrating.