Alert reader Ernie points us to the web site for the Hans Brinker Budget Hostel in Amsterdam. The opening lines on the hostel’s welcome page inform us, “The Hans Brinker Budget Hotel has been proudly disappointing travellers for forty years. Boasting levels of comfort comparable to a minimum-security prison, the Hans Brinker also offers some plumbing and an intermittently open canteen serving a wide range of dishes based on runny eggs.” Enticement! 

Because it’s best to be prepared, the farsighted folks at Hans Brinker offer at least a dozen handy pages of apologies on their site for whatever will inevitably go wrong with your stay. Hans Brinker is the Eeyore of hostelry.

To wit:

Sorry for being excellent at losing your luggage (with an image of two fingers delicately pinching a filthy sock)

Sorry for being the best in ignoring your complaints (with a graceful female hand proffering an empty roll of toilet paper)

Apologies for our receptionist’s behaviour! (“This voucher entitles you to one half-price beer at the Hans Brinker Bar”)

and many more.

Once hopes that being pre-emptively amusing does not mean the Brinker fails to try to please its customers, even within its budget niche. It is possible to be downmarket yet delightful. (Hey, my first job was writing for Let’s Go Europe — I know from hostels both craptastic and fab). Tripadvisor‘s ratings for it are all over the place. But Sumac and I love Amsterdam, and cell-like rooms, and beds that are, as one Tripadvisor reviewer put it, comfortable when you are drunk. Because we are writers! And therefore drunk and used to cell-like accommodations! Book the annual staff retreat!

PS. Susan’s not drunk.