Ciarus

The best hostel I've ever stayed in!

I have a lot to say about Ciarus, both good and bad. First things first: our arrival. Personally, me and my roommate did not have any problems when we arrived and were promptly given our keys by one of the kind people at the front desk. However, upon asking others in our group how their arrival went, it turns out not everybody had the same experience. Another group of friends were told to wait for a while, and when one girl finally got to present her ID to a lady at the front desk, she was told “boys first” and had to go to the back of the line. Strange, I thought when she told me this. It sounded like from half of the students, their arrival was met rudely and did not leave a good first impression. Still, I continued on with high hopes for our stay here. The first week itself went well, actually! The room I was to stay in was very spacious, we had a beautiful view of the street, and the food was buffet style and decent. I personally felt like the room was nice. However, other students complained about how small their rooms felt like, which I didn’t understand until I visited their room and realized it was half of ours. I would definitely recommend studying abroad to continue hosting this program in Strasbourg! The city itself was not a problem at all. Ciarus became somewhat of a problem when we had our first case of COVID among our classmates. On a late night during our second week there, I received a message that someone had gotten COVID. Later on, another case. The next morning, two more cases. Those who had roommates with COVID had to spend the night with them, as the hostel was totally booked. Many students were exasperated by this. Ciarus did not enforce any type of COVID precautions or separation among the different parties. Upon telling Ciarus that we had COVID cases, they apparently were very shocked and angry, but it wasn’t our fault that we caught covid. When we had figured out who was positive and who was negative, Ciarus refused to allow us to have more rooms to house the negative roommates that were to be kicked out, forcing a reshuffling of rooming situations. A student I knew ended up in a very tiny room with two other students, giving almost no space for their belongings. They had two pairs of bunk beds, meaning 4 beds total. However, one of the beds had already been used by a COVID positive person, and another bed was discovered to have blood splatters on it… they asked the front lady if someone could come and take out and replace the sheets, but refused because of COVID, although everyone was all negative. We tried another staff member, who assured us some clean linens would be provided–linens that never even came. One of them had two options–sleep on the bloody bed or a bed contaminated with COVID. Our cohort was asked to wear masks in the hotel, even though the rest of us were negative. My group of friends and I complied with this demand, only to be treated like hot garbage by some of the staff. My roommate went downsta