Interlaken Happy Central Apartment

Good value, about a five-minute walk from the train station. There's a shared kitchen. Recommended.

The room had two single beds and two bunk beds for four people, but luggage for everyone left very little space. There was just one power socket, which was a nightmare. Guests on the same floor shared a separate kitchen and bathroom. The bathroom had good hot water, though sometimes cold water would come through with it.

This was by far the worst of the dozen hostels and Airbnbs we stayed in during our Europe trip. I had to use train station bathrooms because the ones at Happy Central were either backed up with a queue or had plumbing that didn't work. After four days of the shared bathroom leaking everywhere, workers said they hadn't known there was a problem. The kitchen is squeezed between another room and the bathroom, with poor ventilation and no smoke detector. We tried the oven, and after about 5ish minutes the kitchen filled with black smoke that made it hard to breathe even on the next floor. My food was still frozen, but the owner said I must have burnt it. The owner didn't seem to care and blamed the spiderwebs on guests. I've made it my life's ambition to get this dump removed from Booking.com.

The owner refused compensation and seemed not to care. Plumbing didn't work, the sink drained into a garage can, and the oven nearly caught fire, with no smoke detector anywhere. Don't trust the photos or reviews. The 10/10 and 5/5 ratings are from the property, and the staged pictures don't show how dirty, cramped, and run-down the place is. It's genuinely a health hazard.