City Hostel St Petersburg

not so good
I took a party of twelve well-behaved youngsters (18-19 years old) to this hostel recently. First impressions were okay:it's very central and the rooms were clean and quite acceptable - tho those on the Nevsky Prospekt side are very noisy. Breakfast is poor: sliced white bread, imported jam, cup of tea. The manager asked me to tell the party not to gather in the common room! We were also told on arrival that the hostel could not register us (very important for visitors in Russia) tho when we argued about it they said they would. Did they? I don't know. There were two showers for twelve and one of those was out of commission for most of the time. When the time came to leave the manager refused to give us our key deposits back. In opening and closing one of the windows the base of the plastic window handle had cracked. She said a flyscreen had fallen too and both of these were our fault. For this she kept deposits for all our rooms - a cool $100! There is no advertising of the hostel on the street, at its door or on its windows. You just wouldn't know it was there. A Russian friend told me this is probably because it is not legally registered. I would not go back. The hostel itself isn't too bad but the staff attitude is hopeless.