A few weeks after our first visit, we stayed in apartment 5 on the first floor. I’d emailed ahead asking for a thorough clean, including the radiators, but it was just as dirty as the basement apartment. There was toothpaste left in the sink, grime by the sink and stove, hair in the dishwasher, and coffee marks on the counter. The kettle and coffee maker were so scaled up we didn’t want to use them. The couch was still filthy, and the shower curtain had hair from the previous guest on it. The bed frame was broken and the sheet had holes. There were hardly any supplies: no pictures on the walls, though there were nails, no working clock, bread knife or peeler, and just three tiny dessert bowls for an apartment meant for four or five. We’d booked that second stay before our first one, and after that first trip we wouldn’t have come back. It had been a spontaneous booking, so only basement apartment 1 was available. Some of the sheets were stained or inside out, the sofa bed was worn out, and the beds looked like they dated from the 60s or 70s. The photos hadn’t shown that there were two separate single beds. The plastic bed frames had mold spots. When we contacted the manager, he came with an employee and they cleaned the frames. They said it was dirt, not mold, and told us they’d never done a deep clean since taking over, only regular cleaning. They also said there supposedly hadn’t been mold in the apartment before. But the window frames, bathroom ceiling, heating pipes, and back of the living room cabinet all suggested otherwise. The pipes ran along the living room wall in a strange, winding route. We were told the beds would be replaced after our stay. The apartment had cobwebs everywhere, dirty baseboards, and radiators so filthy we didn’t dare dry towels on them. In April, nothing really dried down there anyway. The promised towel change after a week never happened. When we asked what detergent was used because of an allergic reaction, we were told they washed the laundry with fabric softener only. The dish towels didn’t dry properly either. There was a washing machine in the building, but the owner wouldn’t let us use it, so when the kids had accidents we had to wash their clothes in the shower. We couldn’t find the supposedly provided drying rack or a bicycle rack. The only option was an outdoor clothesline under trees where birds sat, which wasn’t much use in April weather. There was no bathroom trash can, which I found especially unacceptable with babies in diapers and for women who need to dispose of hygiene products. That meant taking diapers to the kitchen or hanging an open bag in the bathroom. Two kitchen chairs were cracked, and our 24 kg son immediately collapsed onto one of them. The apartment was supposed to have been freshly painted, but there were still brown marks above the bedroom bed and the hallway paint job looked half-hearted. The smoke detector was in a drawer instead of on the ceiling, and a wardrobe knob from the 60s was coming loose.
