Liza
This is a very sad place to stay. There are no restaurants nearby and you cannot cook on the stove because it doesn't get hot enough (I had to use the counter-top tea kettle to even boil water) so food is challenging. Don't make the mistake of checking in on a weekend--Smartments is not staffed and no human will respond to your inquiries (you'll just get AI responses saying someone will contact you \"soon,\" which they will not). There were dirty dishes in our room when we checked in. The laundry machines either eat your money and don't start, don't work, or are in use. What they described as a \"family apartment\" was 2 rooms connected by a very heavy fire door. There's no room to sit together as a family either at a dining table (not enough seats) or on a couch (seats 1 person and is very uncomfortable). The TV remote did not work and there was only one channel not in German (Sky News) -- nothing else in English and nothing in French or Spanish. Appliances in the room don't have instructions & are not intuitive to use. Pillows are both lumpy & flat at the same time. There's no trash shoot or recycling area except in the back lot, although cleaning is only once/week and garbage cans are tiny. Speaking of trash, there is a lot in the area. I come from NYC which is known for not being clean, and it was still pretty shocking. The transportation is convenient, but that is true of most parts of Berlin. Sometimes there is one employee in the building. One was nice; others weren't.
