Apartment am Wall

For €29 a night, I think this apartment is perfectly reasonable. The room is small but has a charming feel, and the spot by the canal with a park in front is lovely. There are drawbacks: the TV is small, there's mold in the bathroom that needs fixing, even if only with a coat of paint, and the sink leaves too little room to sit upright on the toilet. But this isn't somewhere you'd book for a two-week stay in Emden, especially at that price. If you want more amenities, you'll need to pay more.

The beds were comfortable, and the location is good, but that was about it for us. The bathroom in apartment 3 wasn't clean and had mold all over the walls. As earlier reviews had said, it seems this had already been a known problem for a year. We booked two other apartments in the building so we could borrow a coffee machine, despite the listing saying one would be provided, but there wasn't one. When we raised the cleanliness issue, the landlord said he'd look into it later. The house also isn't suitable if you're sensitive to noise. Even watching TV quietly wasn't possible. One person's complaint was so loud it woke the whole building, and then people complained about a dog barking.

The landlord rejected our complaints, including through Booking, and didn't respond to the problems with the apartment or missing amenities. I wouldn't recommend staying here. We had two apartments, each occupied by a couple, and could hear the neighbors talking through the thin walls and doors. The whole place was very bright, too. One room had a broken or missing blind, and the blind in the other didn't reach the floor; its pull chain was missing, so with the high ceilings we had to climb to operate it. There were lots of maintenance issues: crooked bathroom shelves that let things roll off, crooked doors, with the apartment door opening outward instead of inward, and a loose doorknob that was coming off. One room had no coffee machine, despite the description saying every room had one. The bathroom blissé was completely moldy, the TV remote didn't work, the pillows were very cheap, and the dishes and kitchen were dirty when we arrived. Some lamps were missing from their sockets, and sometimes the lampshades were missing too. The hallway smoke detector was lying on the heater without a battery. There was also a dog barking in the apartment below. I love animals, but I don't think they should allow pets in accommodation with such poor soundproofing.

We should really get our money back. The bedroom was only two meters wide, leaving so little room that we couldn't get to the bed in slippers. The mattresses sat on wooden slats with no cushioning at all. The TV was about the size of my laptop, and the bathroom sink only ran scalding water. We couldn't shower because the hose wasn't attached to the shower head. And the so-called terrace? I don't even want to get into that. Think about it before booking.