Hotel Indigo Ku'damm, Berlin ***
Stayed: September, 2014
Here, Nomen non est Omen, clearly. The hotel isn’t on the Kurfürstendamm (“Ku’damm”) in Berlin - it isn’t even in a sidestreet. It is on Hardenbergstrasse 15, which is northwest of the “Zoo” train station, and a good 800m from the Ku’damm on foot.
I was excited at first; the Indigo brand is part of the InterContinental Hotel Group, so that, combined with the price, left me with high expectations - after all, I was to “live” here for a workweek. Unfortunately, my expectations weren’t met - perhaps they were set too high, once again.
For one thing: for a hotel at this nightly rate in Berlin (where I’ve stayed in hotels costing €27 a night including breakfast and lived to talk about it!), you get a pretty small room! The room (503) was decorated along “modern lines”, but that doesn’t necessarily help much.
For one thing, the desk (it’s actually a board held up by two trestles) sports not a single power outlet anywhere near it. Damn the architect! In fact, the bathroom boasts a plethora of outlets - some in bizarre locations (above the toilet... what am I going to plug in here?) while the rest of the room has them hidden in areas that makes you think the designer found them to be dirty, disgusting holes in the wall.
In order to “submerge” the TV (from under which protrude two plastic tabs that probably serve to hold it to the wall - very pretty), a huge, framed panel section was screwed against the entire width of the wall at the foot end of the bed, wasting a good 18cm of badly needed room. Turn 90° and you will inadvertently slam your foot into the base of the chair, which sticks out so far that it leaves barely 10cm space to the bed.
The chair fits the “everything is a designer piece” image and, while it is actually quite comfortable, it can’t be pushed under the “desk” to make more room due to its height. I ended up swapping it with a low, backless “sitting box” that had been placed just after the door.
There is A/C, but even at the lowest fan setting, I felt an uncomfortable breeze across my face as I lay in bed (that’s asking for an earache in the morning), so I ended up turning it off. You can only tip the windows open; i.e. they are locked at the bottom and can’t be opened completely. Even tipped open, you get the full blast of noise from the largish construction site that is situated right in front of the hotel. The acoustics are such that even on the 5th floor, it sounds like they are working right outside your window, but at least it gives you some fresh air in the room.
Following the trend, your bed is completely covered in pillows of various kinds (my room had a queen-sized bed and sported no less than 8 pillows!), as well as something I call the “suitcase cover”. There is no other place than the bed to lay down your suitcase as you pack or unpack it - and to keep the sheets from getting dirty, I put it on this blanket. Apparently, though, it serves as some sort of decoration, as room service ardently puts it back on the bed when they make it up.
Ah yes, that brings me back to available space: there isn’t any place other than the floor for all those pillows and the “suitcase cover” when you’re ready to go to sleep. Personally, that irks me, because I’m going to presume the floor to be dirtier than the bed, but who knows.
Available space is also an issue when you try to hang up / shelve your clothes. If you’re only here for one night, it isn’t going to be an issue, but if you’re here for a week like I was, it is: there aren’t enough hangers in the tiny closet (I asked for more, it took three tries) and one of the two drawers is completely filled with a blanket. Also, they give you four hangers for pants, but you’ll not be able to squeeze more than three into the narrow “deep end” of the closet. The rest is so small that you’ll have issues with longer shirts hitting bottom.
The bathroom is the next painful experience from an ergonomic standpoint. It closes with a sliding door (there would be no room to have a regular one!), but because it has under-cabinet LED lighting that you can’t turn off, you’ll be annoyed by wide swaths of light at night. Said LED lighting is necessary, because the light switch is inside on the far wall of the bathroom (wanna bet it was the same designer that also put a power outlet above the toilet?).
The shower is weird - I’ve never seen one like it, and I’ve been to a lot of different hotels in my time: the shimmering tiles on the back wall are, surely, a matter of taste (yuck!) but the “floor” of the shower is special: half of it is at a felt 30° angle down to the drain, the other half is completely flat. Water won’t flow away from it - every time I showered, I was afraid I would douse the bathroom. It really is a lot of water up there; I ended up trying to get most of it down the “ramp” with my feet...
There are two elevators, one you face when you walk in from the main entrance, and one “tucked” in to the left of it, which is considerably smaller. As soon as you hit your floor button, you are innundated with “feel good” instrumental music, which is a tick too loud and annoying. When you reach your floor, a squeaky female voice asks you the floor number (the tonality makes the “statement” into a question), which continually serves to amuse me. Less amusing, perhaps, is the loud *crack* you hear between the ground and first floor every time you take the “little” elevator up.
Breakfast is actually quite okay, with most things you’ll be looking for, albeit the medium-sized restaurant gets really crowded during peak times.
All in all, I can’t shake the feeling that IHG is trying to position the Indigo brand against Radisson’s BLU. This is an utter fail, however; don’t even try to make the comparison.
I would stay here again if I couldn’t find another hotel.
Here, Nomen non est Omen, clearly. The hotel isn’t on the Kurfürstendamm (“Ku’damm”) in Berlin - it isn’t even in a sidestreet. It is on Hardenbergstrasse 15, which is northwest of the “Zoo” train station, and a good 800m from the Ku’damm on foot.
I was excited at first; the Indigo brand is part of the InterContinental Hotel Group, so that, combined with the price, left me with high expectations - after all, I was to “live” here for a workweek. Unfortunately, my expectations weren’t met - perhaps they were set too high, once again.
For one thing: for a hotel at this nightly rate in Berlin (where I’ve stayed in hotels costing €27 a night including breakfast and lived to talk about it!), you get a pretty small room! The room (503) was decorated along “modern lines”, but that doesn’t necessarily help much.
For one thing, the desk (it’s actually a board held up by two trestles) sports not a single power outlet anywhere near it. Damn the architect! In fact, the bathroom boasts a plethora of outlets - some in bizarre locations (above the toilet... what am I going to plug in here?) while the rest of the room has them hidden in areas that makes you think the designer found them to be dirty, disgusting holes in the wall.
In order to “submerge” the TV (from under which protrude two plastic tabs that probably serve to hold it to the wall - very pretty), a huge, framed panel section was screwed against the entire width of the wall at the foot end of the bed, wasting a good 18cm of badly needed room. Turn 90° and you will inadvertently slam your foot into the base of the chair, which sticks out so far that it leaves barely 10cm space to the bed.
The chair fits the “everything is a designer piece” image and, while it is actually quite comfortable, it can’t be pushed under the “desk” to make more room due to its height. I ended up swapping it with a low, backless “sitting box” that had been placed just after the door.
There is A/C, but even at the lowest fan setting, I felt an uncomfortable breeze across my face as I lay in bed (that’s asking for an earache in the morning), so I ended up turning it off. You can only tip the windows open; i.e. they are locked at the bottom and can’t be opened completely. Even tipped open, you get the full blast of noise from the largish construction site that is situated right in front of the hotel. The acoustics are such that even on the 5th floor, it sounds like they are working right outside your window, but at least it gives you some fresh air in the room.
Following the trend, your bed is completely covered in pillows of various kinds (my room had a queen-sized bed and sported no less than 8 pillows!), as well as something I call the “suitcase cover”. There is no other place than the bed to lay down your suitcase as you pack or unpack it - and to keep the sheets from getting dirty, I put it on this blanket. Apparently, though, it serves as some sort of decoration, as room service ardently puts it back on the bed when they make it up.
Ah yes, that brings me back to available space: there isn’t any place other than the floor for all those pillows and the “suitcase cover” when you’re ready to go to sleep. Personally, that irks me, because I’m going to presume the floor to be dirtier than the bed, but who knows.
Available space is also an issue when you try to hang up / shelve your clothes. If you’re only here for one night, it isn’t going to be an issue, but if you’re here for a week like I was, it is: there aren’t enough hangers in the tiny closet (I asked for more, it took three tries) and one of the two drawers is completely filled with a blanket. Also, they give you four hangers for pants, but you’ll not be able to squeeze more than three into the narrow “deep end” of the closet. The rest is so small that you’ll have issues with longer shirts hitting bottom.
The bathroom is the next painful experience from an ergonomic standpoint. It closes with a sliding door (there would be no room to have a regular one!), but because it has under-cabinet LED lighting that you can’t turn off, you’ll be annoyed by wide swaths of light at night. Said LED lighting is necessary, because the light switch is inside on the far wall of the bathroom (wanna bet it was the same designer that also put a power outlet above the toilet?).
The shower is weird - I’ve never seen one like it, and I’ve been to a lot of different hotels in my time: the shimmering tiles on the back wall are, surely, a matter of taste (yuck!) but the “floor” of the shower is special: half of it is at a felt 30° angle down to the drain, the other half is completely flat. Water won’t flow away from it - every time I showered, I was afraid I would douse the bathroom. It really is a lot of water up there; I ended up trying to get most of it down the “ramp” with my feet...
There are two elevators, one you face when you walk in from the main entrance, and one “tucked” in to the left of it, which is considerably smaller. As soon as you hit your floor button, you are innundated with “feel good” instrumental music, which is a tick too loud and annoying. When you reach your floor, a squeaky female voice asks you the floor number (the tonality makes the “statement” into a question), which continually serves to amuse me. Less amusing, perhaps, is the loud *crack* you hear between the ground and first floor every time you take the “little” elevator up.
Breakfast is actually quite okay, with most things you’ll be looking for, albeit the medium-sized restaurant gets really crowded during peak times.
All in all, I can’t shake the feeling that IHG is trying to position the Indigo brand against Radisson’s BLU. This is an utter fail, however; don’t even try to make the comparison.
I would stay here again if I couldn’t find another hotel.
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