Located close to Keleti Station, Dominik Panzio is a low cost, low service accommodation option in Budapest. Actually, aside from the location, the only other perks are…the fact that it’s warm in the room and there’s hot water all the time.

The good:

• Location : close to Keleti, from where you can take metro line 2 to the city center
• Hot water
• Heated rooms
• Free towels and linen
• Free wi-fi (if it works)

The bad:

• Horrible toilets: the doors don’t close, the toilets are flooded
• 10 a.m. check out and no storage room available
• free wi-fi: when it gets overloaded with users (as in 4 users) it doesn’t work
• the noise: if someone slams a door, you’ll hear that regardless of where you are in the hostel
• the staff: one of the guys at the reception was so bitter I could swear he ate a bunch of lemons before coming to work.

>>book your accommodation at Dominik Panzio

Alex’s first impression of the panzio, before going through the door was: “what is this place? It says school dorm on the door” . Since it looked like in the photo on their website I said: “let’s go”. We said we had a reservation and, after part of the forms were done, I told Alex to talk to the bitter guy at the reception in Hungarian because he wasn’t that good at English. He seemed to not like that because he was even bitter…moving on.

When we got to our room…surprise! It was a twin room and not a double room despite that our reservation was made for a double room. He could have said something though, but …we had to find out ourselves.

The only good part about the morning? Well, the wi-fi worked good enough to allow me to make a call via Skype to a mobile cell in Romania (so at least I saved some money there cause I still had some in my Skype account). Meantime, the guys (Alex and our friend, another Alex) talk to the guy at the reception to switch rooms so we got the double room eventually. If we had traveled alone…could we have switched to…what room (or at all) ?

Come early evening, we decided to get online to post some photos before we went to the city again (for some night shots). The net worked slowly but it allowed me to post exactly three photos on Facebook. When we came back from the city, I hoped to post some more photos and wanted to call my parents again. Total fail! The net didn’t work at all on my netbook. Neither on any of our phones.

I was glad to actually get good night’s sleep (I was very tired anyway) and surprised to see that, by morning, they actually fixed the flooded toilet and the door that didn’t close (not that I dared closed it for fear of getting locked inside; because Alex had to kick the door to get out of the gentlemen’s toilet).

However, breakfast felt almost like a joke. Some slices of swiss cheese and 4 types of ham and salami to choose from, margarine, several types of pate and jam. Only white bread, (not so strong) coffee, tea, milk and various types of cereals along with two types of juices. It was ok because it was an open buffet but no matter what you chose, the breakfast would keep you filled for too long (assuming you don’t actually try every possible combination). I appreciate variety especially since we paid 3 euros per person for breakfast. And yes, I like strong coffee. And some yogurt because I am allergic to milk.

The 10 a.m. check out proved to be one of the lousiest things because it forced us out of the hostel very early and by midday we were already in a pub, trying to give our feet some rest and to get something to eat.

Conclusion? I would give Dominik Panzio a 7 for the general facilities and how it felt. However, a low budget student might give them a better grade. As our friend said “for 21 euros, heck it’s ok. I don’t expect much”. Well, neither did I but I expect to find what they promise when we made our reservations.

Our rating

(c) photo Cristina P.

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