Jugendherberge Karlsruhe

The check-in window is 17 to 21, breakfast runs from 6.30 to 9.30, and check-out is by 10. There’s free Wi-Fi with no login, just a captive portal where you accept the terms. On a technical note, they intercept unencrypted HTTP on a Sophos device and show an error page if that website is down. That could break some apps, and it’s generally considered bad practice, in fact, it’s called a man-in-the-middle attack. I booked well in advance and used the notes section for an extra request, as they’d suggested, asking for a building key. There wasn’t one for me at check-in, so they don’t seem to manage their own booking system well. They also charged me 1.50€ for a towel I never received. If you ask for one, you’ll find they only have towels in the evening. Apparently they don’t keep spares, since they send them all to the laundry cleaners at once. I’m not completely sure anymore, so I’m leaving this out of my rating, but I could swear I’d seen it when booking, since I almost always check for this: there was no shower in the room or one reserved just for a couple of rooms, accessible only from those rooms. The shower was supposedly somewhere on the same floor, but I hadn’t found it. I also didn’t look actively because I still didn’t have a towel. This is the second hostel this year where something like this has happened, so maybe I should start packing one of my own. The room also didn’t have the sink shown in some pictures. Someone set off the fire alarm at almost exactly 8am local time. It was later said to have happened because someone set their electric kettle on fire. At the same time, their laundry contractor was there to collect dirty laundry, and I noticed a major safety issue: they parked the back of their LKW right against the exit, making evacuation difficult. The person in front of me nearly tripped and fell over the edge. You can see from Streetview or other outside pictures that the raised platform with 2-3 steps is all at once their main entrance, LKW loading dock, and main emergency exit. The firefighters seemed quite relaxed and not in much of a hurry; when they arrived, one grabbed a fire extinguisher and went in looking more annoyed than urgent. Interestingly, almost everyone calmed down right away, thinking that if it were really bad, they’d be responding more urgently.

The food was the only decent part of my class trip. The staff weren’t very nice, and we had to eat with people we didn’t know. We weren’t allowed to eat in our rooms, either. We had trouble with the water and couldn’t really get cold drinking water in the middle of summer. The options were to go outside or buy a mini bottle there for 2€. There were no fans or anything similar, and the sun came up around 5am, but our room had no curtains. At night, from about 10 to 12pm, you could hear some people, I don’t know if they were guys or girls, banging on the walls. We were first told we could go to our rooms at 5pm, but because the cleaning person didn’t show up for their shift, we waited until around 7pm, exhausted. The rooms still weren’t clean when we got in. Later, at around 10:30pm, someone came in to clean while we were trying to sleep. The bedding was dirty, and one classmate said theirs had blood on it. There were half-full bottles and socks under the beds. If you were in a bottom bunk, you could see how many people had already slept in that room. The floor was extremely dirty, too. The toilet we shared with two classmates was clogged. At night, we either had to wake up other classmates to pee or walk down three floors. That was my experience. I wouldn’t recommend going, especially in summer, but it’s your decision. :(( EDIT: This review is from July 2022. I uploaded it then, but it wasn’t approved because some pictures were apparently too shaly. I hadn’t visited this account in a while, so I only recently noticed. I removed the pictures they seemed to have a problem with, and the review was published. I didn’t realize this might confuse you, so I apologize. I hope things have changed since then.

The breakfast is really good, from 7am to 10am, and there are other interesting things too, so have a look around. The rooms are nice, clean, and comfortable. There’s also a free locker room for keeping your belongings safe, just ask for it.

I’ve stayed in more than 20 youth hostels around the world, and this was one of the most awful nights I’ve had. I was alone in my room and felt really unsafe, to the point that I was close to calling the police. There seemed to be no walls between the rooms, and the other guests made unbelievable noise for hours late at night. It sounded like several people were drunk or high. They kept kicking the walls and floors, shouting, laughing loudly, and throwing things. I didn’t have the courage to confront them because they sounded completely out of control. I couldn’t sleep. It was unacceptable, and the first time I’d ever felt this unsafe in a youth hostel.