My smelly room on the 'backside' of the Mercure (Mercure Columbus Bremen)

Member Name: koshkha

Product:	Mercure Columbus Bremen
Date:	27/04/09 (135 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: They had a room - my preferred hotel didn't

Disadvantages: Small, smelly, over-priced. Is that enough?

Unfortunately the hotel where I normally stay in Bremen (the Intercity) was fully booked. It was probably my own fault for leaving the booking so late and was not helped by the company travel agent 'forgetting' to make a booking. With the Intercity full, I was sent to the Mercure. I had seen the hotel from the outside many times as it's on the Bahnhofplatz, directly opposite the main entrance to the station so I knew where I was going but my expectations weren't high. I'm not a fan of hotels in the Accor family unless they are at least the Novotels or Sofitels and I'd eat my own liver before I'd choose to stay in an Ibis. Mercures sit above Ibis and below Novotel so you're never too sure what the quality will be.

Seen from outside the main impression is that this is a seriously BIG hotel - stretching right from the corner across several shops and bars. I checked in at about 7 pm and there was nobody else around. The receptionist was pleasant, more or less efficient (she couldn't find my paperwork and getting a code for the internet seemed to be two person job of a complexity on a par with cracking the Enigma cyphers) and friendly. She explained that internet access was Euro7.95 for 12 hours and was wi-fi but if I didn't want to pay, the public access computer in the lobby was free. Euro7.95 wasn't too bad, I thought.

The lobby itself is large but bland with little to tempt you to linger. The decoration is distinctly dated and it's an L-shaped room with some seating, the usual racks of 'what to do in Bremen' pamphlets, the small internet area and a tiny bar on the end of the reception counter. I headed to the lifts and up to the 6th floor.

If I'm feeling charitable, I can assume that the hotel must have been really full for me to get given a room on the only smoking floor. I loath and detest the smell of smoke almost as much as the smell of over-liberally applied air-freshener. I stepped out of the lift and was assaulted by the combination of old smoke and air-freshener. With my annual hayfever kicking in for the past couple of weeks, my eyes were already very sensitive and I could tell this was going to be tricky.

My room was on what I've learned Germans call (without any sense of irony) the 'backside' of the hotel. This should have been quieter than the front over-looking the square but was actually horribly noisy. Noisier even than the 'backside' rooms at the Intercity which are so close to the railway station that you can hear the trains being announced. The road noise at the Mercure was much more disturbing and this wasn't helped by the need to keep the windows open. When I arrived I opened the windows because the room was so hot and there's no air-con anywhere in the hotel. At night when the temperature plummeted I had to continue to leave them open because of the smell.

My room was a single - which for 91 Euros a night room-only was a bit of a rip off. I pay 66 Euros including breakfast and internet access at the Intercity. Breakfast at this decidedly third rate hotel would have set me back an additional 16 Euros.

The room was small with the floor space split roughly down the middle by the bathroom (and a small lobby with door) and the bedroom. The door was a good idea to keep out the noise from the corridor but that noise was so much less than the noise from outside the windows that the space was effectively just wasted.

The room had a small desk squeezed into an alcove with a table lamp, a TV, a snack tray and a tray with water and glasses. Given the already tiny size of the desk, this left barely space to squeeze a laptop. Between the two windows was a large wardrobe with a spare pillow and little else. The only other furniture was a suitcase stand and the single bed with a bedside unit.

The pillow was worthy of note. I've frequently complained that German hotels have pillows so soft that they give no support and I usually have to steal the pillows off both beds just to get my head an inch or two off the mattress. With only a single bed and a single pillow I was expecting trouble but not of the kind I got. The Mercure pillow was like trying to sleep with your head on a sandbag - fat and exceptionally hard. This combined with the draft from keeping the windows open all night, left me with a nasty crick in my neck which is still annoying me a week later (although that might be something to do with my cat stealing my pillow over the weekend).

The bathroom was instantly recognisably Accor with one of their strange moulded sink units. For a shower-room it was basic but of fair size. The toilet was one of those nasty ones that are historically popular in Germanic countries that is, one where 'what you've done' is retained for later inspection. I find this type of loo very unpleasant. The tiling was old with lots of small chips, the mirror was not particularly well illuminated and the toiletries (with the exception of a small bar of soap) were from wall mounted dispensers.

I had opted to skip breakfast and would suggest to others to do similarly as there are plenty of places to get a good cheap breakfast in the area. Similarly for dinner I'd gone out to the Ubersee Museum just across the road which is my favourite easy and cheap place to eat but you won't starve in this part of town as there are plenty of places to eat ranging from the snack-bars at the railway station through to nice mid-range restaurants.

Check Out was fine - the receptionist was friendly and signed me up for Accor's new loyalty scheme at the same time. I wouldn't normally have bothered but knew I'd be in a Novotel that night so thought I might as well clock up some points whilst I was travelling.

~ Verdict? ~
Of the three hotels I've tried in Bremen, all in the area around the railway station, this is by far the poorest. I hope I won't need to stay there again.


Finally - I'd like to make an apology to my esteemed German friend MALU who would never refer to the 'backside' of a hotel.

Summary: Next time I'll plan ahead so I don't have to go to the Mercure.