First, the good: very clean apartment, comfortable, many kitchen items like toaster, coffee maker, new, located in a quiet neighborhood with good Indian, Italian, and Greek restaurants within walking distance, and steps from the tram, which connects to rail to downtown Berlin. The bad: my traveling companions insisted on a two-bedroom, TWO-bath apartment. Those are hard to find, but find one we did, and that's why it's a fair distance (35 minutes or so) from Alexanderplatz. We communicated this to the owner and assumed all was okay. We made our deposits, reconfirmed (or thought we reconfirmed), and arrived in Berlin. The owner had said by e-mail that she'd meet us at the apartment if we gave her a one-hour notice. I called her from Tegel, and she had the audacity to ask us to pick up the key at another location. I refused, and she said, "okay." We arrived at the apartment, the owner was there, but, guess what? We walked into a ONE-bedroom apartment. My German is limited; her English was limited. She said something about the bathroom not working in the two-bathroom apartment. We accepted the one-bedroom apartment, and it actually worked out for us. But, we'll never know if there was a misunderstanding or if this was a bait-and-switch scam. Make absolutely certain your desires and needs, spell them out clearly (we did both), and then do it again (we did) and again (we didn't). I'd not rent again from this owner, for the reasons I've stated. Incidentally, the apartment was not air-conditioned, and there were no fans in the place. They would have helped. Very disappointed in the process, in the owner and in VRBO.
