We elected to stay at Montgomery’s. In the YHA advertisements, it had billed itself as being "Hobart's most luxurious YHA" and promised a lively hotel atmosphere that would be good fun and good value for money. The rooms were more expensive than I would have normally liked, but the price of a dorm bed wasn’t too dreadful and I figured that it would be worth the cost due to the hostel’s convenient downtown location. Truthfully, luxury doesn't particularly interest Glen nor I. Cleanliness, on the other hand, does.
The hostel managers evidently feel that convenience of location outstrips the requirements of any good hostel to keep a reasonably clean, well-appointed place for guests to stay. The place, quite frankly, just isn’t up to scratch.
One would expect a hostel billing itself as "luxurious" to have kitchen accommodation that could reasonably provide for the 40+ guests that the hostel could hold at any given point of time. In the case of Montgomery’s, one would be wrong. This picture shows the kitchen in it’s entirety – it has one stove-top range, one functioning microwave, one broken microwave, two tables, a whole lot of dinner plates, and a whopping four bowls for stuff like soup or cereal. And as you can see, it was a considerable squeeze to fit six people in the kitchen at once:
The kitchen is on the first floor of the hostel, and as we mount the stairs to the floors containing the rooms, dorms, and TV/internet lounge, we start to witness the strange phenomenon of drywall holes:
The next stop we shall make on our tour is the TV/internet lounge itself. Mouldy old couches aside, we were rather aghast at the state of the ceiling. The paper, paint, plaster, or whatever the heck is covering the ceiling is bubbling up and flaking off in large areas:
Really large areas.
Next up is the dormitory. Funky smell aside (which I blame on the re-breathed sleep air of twelve people as opposed to negligence on the part of the hostel), I am left wondering what sort of pollutants are near this window, whether the pollutants are a result of interior or exterior air, and whether or not the hostel ever intends on actually cleaning said window:
And now, for the finale: the bathroom. In my option, hostels can be rated almost solely on the cleanliness of the bathroom. Soap and hand drying systems, be they blow-dryers or towels, should be available. Toilets should be properly cleaned. Shower stalls should be properly maintained and relatively free of serious mildew or mould build-up. As you can see, such was not the case:
Here’s a close-up:
The pictures don’t really do the mould justice. It crawled up the wall from the floor to at least chest level, a good five feet for sure. It was also thick. It was thick and furry, like a caterpillar. And the mould wasn’t just limited to that one line of grout – it was on the opposite side of the shower stall and around the grouting of the floor basin. Oh, and the toilets were not properly cleaned. Nor were there ever hand towels or dryers. As for soap, one would be lucky to find one of those tiny bars of soap that hotels leave in their guest suites for complimentary use. Usually, there was no soap at all.
Is it any wonder that Glen came away from the Hobart hostel with a really, really nasty cold? "Luxurious" my ass!
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