Central Hostel

Room was great. A heater was brought in and very welcome. Wonderful location.

Check-in was ludicrously painful. Person on duty didn't speak English. We came in as group for four and sought to divide the Bookin.com cost by four. This proved a bridge too far. Person on duty got extremely frustrated going back and forth on Google Translate. We ended up getting local contact to call on phone and arrange. But it shouldn't be that hard or that time consuming. Person on duty turned out to be very kind. But after a long travel day, we really wanted to get into our beds and take a nap, not fight over the bill. I should mention a complicating factor. I use a virtual credit card on Booking.com. It is scoped only for their payment processor. I do this to ensure they do not share with third parties (e.g., random hostels in Ukraine). It's rare, but sometimes hostels still prefer to handle transactions themselves. No problem if it's in person and on a terminal, but I don't wish for my real credit card details to land on their computer. That's how this place was set up. Booking.com furnished my credit card info to hostel in advance, they tried to run transaction, it failed. It's an AWFUL Booking.com policy and jeopardizes data security. In this case, that was likely an exacerbating factor because hostel apparently thought I did not have money on my card. However when we were present, once we finally got to pay by card in person, our cards were no problem.

The staff is very nice

Nothing