DJH Youth Hostel Xanten

Relative hostel close to the city. About 10 minutes on foot to the city center. Very modern and manageable youth hostel.Room ok with bathroom. Breakfast buffet and dinner good. There was nothing to complain about. Parking lot in front of the hostel.

Because of the many bad reviews, I wanted to call ahead. However, no one answers the phone here at any time of the day. Apparently guests are actually simply perceived as a nuisance. Then I'd rather go to a campsite or a hotel.

We often go to youth hostels. The level of comfort is always very different. We received a friendly welcome here, the room was functional and clean, and the beds were even comfortable (rarely). The breakfast was delicious and left nothing to be desired. Parking was also easy here, even with a trailer. What I would always wish for would be a soap dispenser in the toilets in the room. I know it's not a hotel. But for me this is also part of the necessary standard in a youth hostel. See you next time.

Wonderful staff who are very helpful, wonderful food, and very clean rooms! Would recommend to stay here!

Very nice youth hostel. Good location close to the lake, which can be reached on foot in a few minutes. Staff friendly and helpful. Breakfast buffet is plentiful and includes home-baked cakes

The website has not been updated. The rooms are small, sparsely furnished and cramped.

A no-go for a youth hostel: you are allowed to smoke in the entire inner courtyard, or no one pays attention to the “smoking corner”. There are ashtrays everywhere that are not emptied.The inner courtyard itself is very nicely laid out, but unfortunately a bit unkempt.The rooms are simple, unfortunately not really clean.With the ladies at the reception it really depended on who you met. Sometimes very helpful and hard-working, sometimes incredibly inflexible and unfriendly.The food was a disaster. I don't expect luxury in a youth hostel, but soft-boiled frozen vegetables for days, once with overcooked noodles, once with rice, once as chili and then baked again with cheese is not an option.

A very good location in itself, as the lake is only about 500m away on foot.But generally very child-unfriendly and the Germany-wide prices for beer, cola, etc. are much higher in the youth hostel. Me and my family stayed here for a week and had pasta in different shapes every day 😉 and yogurt for dessert every day for dinner. There is no good lounge for the winter and only a small children's playroom.Generally good youth hostel, BUT only if you “chill” at the lake every day until evening with a natural outdoor pool (which is nice for children and adults)😎.

A nice youth hostel, there are various leisure activities/activities in the immediate vicinity (Roman museum,Xanten South Lake, wakeboarding, climbing park)On the DJH site itself there is an artificial turf soccer field and beach volleyball fields.

When I was there for the first time, I probably would have given the hostel a better rating, but at 11 you don't really have any expectations. Now that I've been there again 5 years later, I'm shocked. I'll start with the arrival: As agreed with the youth hostel, we arrived with the class at 10 a.m. But then we had to find out that we weren't allowed to enter our rooms until 3 p.m. because they had to be "cleaned". When we looked around the building we also found the cleaning staff in question. One of them shouted at us in a language we didn't know and we assumed we should leave. Water is provided in the common areas, but unfortunately only sparkling. Since I only drink still and don't trust the taps in the rooms, I always had to remember to take a bottle with me to fill up with me when I eat, as the dining room where the water machine is located is closed at other times. It was also made clear to us right from the start that we were not allowed to stay at the reception and had to be quiet when we walked past. The receptionist was extremely rude throughout the entire stay. Every time you walked past she hissed at you, so at some point you couldn't take her seriously anymore. Even when we whispered in the hallways, where there were no rules about volume, we had to be bullied. She also shooed children away when they had a request because she always seemed to be busy. Whether with an important file, a call or simply your meal. When we came back she admonished us for not waiting at least half an hour, even though she never told us that. If you don't like children you shouldn't do this job. The first lunch was hot dogs, fresh from the bag of course. The vegetarian sausage alternative was inedible. The food got a little better over the next few days, but I still lived mainly on salad or the candy machine. But even the salad was way too oily and wasn't topped up once it was empty. The rooms are quite large, which is good, but you didn't see much of the cleaning that supposedly took 5 hours. Since I was already there, I took a fly swatter with me, which also proved useful since we had a window facing the lake and therefore always had mosquitoes and flies in the room. Somehow it always smelled bad in the room, but because of the insects and because people were constantly grilling, it was difficult to ventilate. There were still large pieces of dust under the beds and dead insects stuck to the walls. The outside windows were full of spider webs and animals I couldn't even name. There was a note on the door indicating that you could get a mosquito plug at reception. But our favorite receptionist said that this only applies to families and where you would get if you gave one to every student. However, you were not allowed to use deodorant, mosquito spray, kettles or anything similar in any room as the fire alarms would go off. There was also mold in the shower and the bed sheets had stains. The fact that there is no unlimited WiFi isn't a bad thing, but the youth hostel itself is a big dead zone. The location is on the lake and just outside the city is nice, but too far from the excursion destinations. We had to walk at least 30 minutes to the Roman Park. The trigger here was probably the school trip idea of ​​not booking buses. Conclusion: I wouldn't want to stay here again voluntarily. I hope for improvements and also that if I receive a response to this review, I won't respond with a line like "Aren't we supposed to stick to the truth?" (As I have read in other reviews), being accused of lying, because some of those I went on this school trip with share my opinion.