I have another business trip to Moscow in a week. This time I decided to try Netizen – fashionable, youthful, “conceptual” as someone called it in the reviews. As a result, the sensations are very unusual. It’s as if I’ve been to a youth camp from Soviet fiction, where communism won all over the world.
There we can find technical progress, the total friendship of peoples (as the hostel is on the Mezdunarodnaya street, en. “International street”) and a very advanced hostel where you can live and create, and there is no need to go out for 24 hours. Only the monetary calculations by some incomprehensible accident have not been cancelled yet. I guess they forgot. However, in Netizen, there are quite a few free things. For example, English-speaking tours in Moscow or film screenings
Although the first impression I had was specific. I decided to book and found rooms for 14, 12, 10 people. For me, it’s kind of too much. There’s also a double room but at the price of a hotel. Prices change all the time, by the way. The prices on the site and at the booking can be different. Found myself a room for six people at a price of 890 rubbles, and at the time of booking the price was 1039, so I’ve paid. It seems the difference is small, I do not want to look like a crumb, but the fact of discrepancy was unpleasant.
So my expectations were sceptical. The situation was aggravated by the fact that I don’t know the area very well and several times I crossed the underground passage to Sergiy Radonezhsky street or somewhere else. The navigator, as it should be in such situations, misbehaved. But it was the first time I visited the Rimskaya underground station, which is very unusual for the Moscow underground. It turned out that Netizen is very close to the underground station.
Netizen Hostel starts with a bright sign visible from a distance in the dark. “Have we ever stayed here before?” question and five minutes of formality took my time.
The room has high ceilings and a large window, which immediately makes the dormitory nice. The room has a locker and you can get a key for 100 rubbles deposit.
The abundance of rules is understandable if there are 14 people in a room. There’s no other way. The public spaces are the same size as the hostel. By the evening it’s not as clean as I saw in the last hostel “Fasol”. But in general, it’s decent, and in the morning there was a cleaning crew working.
In the room I found my bed on the lower tier, towel, 2 sockets, individual light, hooks – everything is well organized and comfortable. I left the dent on my own – it was plain. On top, someone curled up his blanket in a lump, however, I had the only neighbour that night. And I barely met her. That’s okay – it was fun in the lobby.
Everything here is built so that guests spend less time in their rooms and more time in common areas. And they wouldn’t want to leave this place quickly. It seems to me that it is not the easiest task to organize space for work and rest, to fill it with services and opportunities.
“My favourite soup is okroshka! Juice and sausage!” – told the Brazilian to the citizen of Omsk at the bar. On the second tier on the sofas, something was discussed by the team of 20-year-old startuppers, someone was working, someone was watching football. There was enough space for everyone and it was comfortable.
In the morning I had breakfast with a view of Moscow. Oatmeal, sausages, eggs, cheese, yoghurt, coffee, tea – everything you need for 250 rubbles. You can eat on your own, but you can’t take anything from the kitchen into your rooms.
Technology, mysticism, capitalism and communism are all together like…
Eclecticism is all about Moscow, but in the area of Ploschad Ilyicha, it is especially striking. The Church of St. Basil’s Confessor, Mezhdunarodnaya street, and the hostel itself is adjacent to the office centre, which is not liked by the locals.
Shkolnaya street is a landmark that not every tourist can reach. It used to be called the 1st Rogozhskaya Street, and before that, it was called the Telezhnaya Street. For another 200 years it is still the capital, and “2 versts to Moscow” Rogozhskaya Sloboda is on the way to Vladimir. Traditionally merchant surnames from Old Believers settled here. From here, there is not quite the Moscow look of the Sloboda. It looks more like a notorious county town. Modern buildings hang over the street like thunderclouds. I think I had a similar sense of a puffy city in Tel Aviv.
I was out for 40 minutes. It got light, the rush hours were over. Now without adventure, I went down to the Rimskaya underground station and went on my own business.
A couple of days later I received a letter with a request to evaluate the hostel, which had a detailed, but the moderate list of parameters: from the state of the room to the initiative of free tours. I approved in general, but I wrote a dissatisfaction with the difference in prices.
Netizen is interesting for its size, the atmosphere of the youth camp and the party. Although I’ve seen adult guests there as well. With me in the elevator came down the Chinese, Brazilians, a company from Ryazan in costumes, colleagues went to the conference/training. Hostels have long been inhabited by everyone who needs budget accommodation in Moscow: from correspondence students to business travellers. Netizen is ready to accept, organize, put a huge number of people in their places. The real hostel for megapolis!
Section “Blogger’s sketches about hostels in Moscow”
