Apartment Soul

The rules the management has set up help keep the place quiet and clean. I found this good-value accommodation surprisingly well equipped for the price: the kitchen is well-supplied, the bathrooms are clean, and the guest rooms are comfortable. It feels different from a hotel, Airbnb or hostel. Self check-in is easy, there’s a beautiful river view from the back balcony, and coffee and tea are free. I highly recommend it.

We left feeling anxious, watched, infantilized and emotionally unsafe. We stayed for two nights, and that was more than enough. It felt like guests were monitored like suspects, corrected like children, and treated as if ordinary feelings were disruptive. The first night, my friend came back wearing flip-flops. That was her mistake, and she apologized right away over Booking.com. Within 10 minutes of re-entering, we got a message, which made it clear we were being watched in real time. The cameras are visible, but the experience of being monitored and corrected live wasn’t clearly communicated. The next morning, around 9-10am, my friend was having a quiet, emotional conversation with a friend on the balcony and was crying softly. Instead of simply asking us to keep it down, the host approached with a Google Translate message telling us to stop talking, in a passive aggressive tone. Shortly after, my friend left the room and was suddenly intercepted by a host who seemed to be trying to catch her “in the act.” We were fully complying with the rules by then. It felt like we were being watched in order to be corrected, not for safety, but for control. Later that evening, we were quiet in our room, our bags already packed to avoid tension the next morning, when we felt someone outside the door. I opened it and saw someone walking away. We couldn’t say who it was, but after what had happened, it felt like another invasion of privacy. We didn’t cook, just made tea. We didn’t party or leave a mess, and we followed quiet hours and every rule. Still, we were treated like rule-breakers in advance. Looking at other negative reviews, this seems not to be new. The host routinely responds to criticism by belittling guests and mocking their intelligence or language skills. Some real quotes: “Don’t you think it’s stupid…”, “Learn to read…”, and “You, as adults, decided to book…”. That tone speaks volumes. You can hide surveillance in fine print and call correction “respect,” but guests know the difference between a safe space and a correctional facility. This was the latter, and no traveler deserves that.

I stayed in 2 rooms. The second was a big improvement over the first and more spacious. My first room was small and had hairline cracks in the ceiling. There are only 2 bathrooms, which can cause a que. The place is very clean, though the cameras everywhere make it feel like big brother.

The room felt roomy and comfortable, with good connections into town. It was bright, clean, and had everything set up well.