Name: Hotel Hawana
Address: Boczna 29, Bydgoszcz, Bydgoszcz, Bydgoszcz, 85-734, Poland
Rating: 8

24-hour reception

Smoke-free property

Heating

Garden

All Spaces Non-Smoking (public and private)

General

Non-smoking rooms

Room service

Hairdryer

Flat-screen TV

Shower/Bathtub

Shower

Linens

Rooms

Accessibility features

Accessibility

Wake-up service

Services and amenities

Bottled water

Meals

Free Wi-Fi

Internet

English

Polish

Languages Spoken

Free parking

Parking

Beach/pool towels

Pool and beach

Pets Not Allowed

Pets

Location

At the hotel

Room amenities

Zawisza Stadium

Deluge Fountain

Bydgoszcz Oncology Center

Ogrod Fauny Polskiej Zoo

Old Market Square

Wyspa Mlynska

Exploseum Factory DAG

Bydgoszcz Airport

Dinosaur Park

Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Rynek Staromiejski

Town Museum

Copernicus Museum

Church of St. John the Baptist and St. John the Evangelist

Hotel Hawana

Bydgoszcz

child-bed

child-bed-fee

external-private-bathroom

private-bathroom

shared-bathroom

10-beds

11-beds

12-beds

13-beds

14-beds

15-beds

16-beds

17-beds

18-beds

19-beds

2-beds

20-beds

21-beds

22-beds

23-beds

24-beds

25-beds

26-beds

27-beds

28-beds

29-beds

3-beds

30-beds

31-beds

32-beds

33-beds

34-beds

35-beds

36-beds

37-beds

38-beds

39-beds

4-beds

40-beds

5-beds

6-beds

7-beds

8-beds

9-beds

king-bed

queen-bed

limited-time

lounge

treatment

no-window

bay-view

bosphorus-view

canal-view

city-view

courtyard-view

garden-view

golf-view

harbour-view

inland-view

lake-view

land-view

mountain-view

ocean-front

ocean-view

oceanside

panoramic-view

park-view

partial-ocean-view

partial-sea-view

partial-view

pool-view

river-view

sea-front

sea-view

street-view

sunrise-view

sunset-view

water-view

with-view

annex

basement

main-building

1-bedroom

2-bedrooms

3-bedrooms

4-bedrooms

5-bedrooms

6-bedrooms

not-guaranteed

wired-internet-access

smoking

sauna

duplex

safe

mini-bar

breakfast-for-1

breakfast-for-2

pets-allowed

wi-fi

kitchen

Simple rooms but once you get past the location and the garish exterior it's fantastic... rooms are all clean and well equipped, breakfast is varied and fresh with fruit as well as extras on offer. Coffee form the normal machine and free onsite secure parking. Garage for essentials up the road and all for £25. Ideal stopover.

Ignore the outside and the location - an ideal stopover

Booked into this hotel for 2 nights whilst visiting family in bydgosczc. The staff couldn't do enough for us from the start. Rooms were lovely and included breakfast was great. 

We arrived early but Yola let us sit in the beautiful gardens and brought us water, tea and cakes while we waited! We also had family visiting the next day and the lady who I think is the owner brought us for food and drink for us all when they arrived. They waved us off when we left. Would definitely return! 

Brilliant staff 

The place is modest and, guess, properly priced. Nothing fancy, basic stuff. Mind-boggling decor: why would ... The manager?/owner? went out of his way to make sure I leave before 6 a.m. with a full breakfast. Hats off.

Budget place with exraordinary staff

This is going to be a tricky review, but if you're staying at this hotel, or considering doing so, please read it. 

TL;DR - stay somewhere else.

I'm a 38 year old English white male, a 5 foot 11 solo business traveller with ordinary dietary needs, experience of many cultures and a enthusiastic willingness to immerse myself in whatever I find. My intention is not to be unfriendly, but merely to offer a fair account of my time at this establishment. 

I stayed at Hotel Hawana for four nights while in Bydgoszcz, my first time in this Polish town which is a 45 minute hop on a DeHavilland Dash8 Q400 from Warsaw, a very satisfying aircraft to travel on. 

The airport is small. Book a taxi. I was collected by a guy with my name on a board, as requested. He told me he didn't speak English and we would be at the hotel in an amount of time I could not understand. He wasn't a taxi driver; it wasn't a taxi, no meter, no ID. Is this a good idea? What choice do I have? Turns out, he's the son of the family that own the hotel. He was nice enough. He liked my iPhone 6+. The parents didn't seem interested in making conversation. 

This hotel is located in the middle of a wasteland near a garage. I'd been travelling for a long time when I arrived and I was struck by the fact it SORT of looks like a hotel, but it's more of a bed & breakfast. Or a house.  Single storey, can't have more than 10 rooms. The garden looks real nice.

There is no check-in. I'm just there.

I'm hungry. They don't make food. No food here. OK… It's 21:30 local time on a Sunday night and the hotel doesn't make food. You should know that. 

So what did I do? I accepted a lift with his dad (this is also not a taxi) who thoughtfully, wordlessly, dropped me off at a local Carrefour which had a KFC. No English spoken here, either, but it's open and everyone knows the word CHICKEN, right? I ate the weirdest tasting KFC I've ever had (it tasted more like the hand cleaning wipes) and walked back along the 20 minutes to my room.

Which is fairly big but the two single beds are very small. My feet hang over the end. The general air is that of my great-grandmothers house but without the hidden tin of secret chocolates. It's kind of musty. The electrical sockets are not really connected to the wall. It isn't smoky, though it looks like it should be, the leather is light brown, the lace is old and precious, the carpets are stained and stained again. It might be a bit 'old people', but I can sleep here. The shower is ace, a powerful  mixer with plenty of hot water and a big cubicle and those curtains that blow inwards and fill the space, sticking to your legs as soon as you step in. The bathroom smells odd. Sort of sickly sweet. Never figured out why. The towels are small and rough, just like the toilet paper but I get new ones every day. 

No food, does that mean no breakfast? I wonder to myself with some trepidation as I fall into an uneasy sleep.

It's early. I wander. There is food!

	• Gherkins, in vinegar.
	• Tomatoes, in vinegar with onions on.
	• Tubes of creamy meat
	• Cabbage, in creamy vinegar.
	• Beetroot soup? 
	• Lemon tea that doesn’t taste of lemons.
	• A massive tub of mustard.
	• A silver centrepiece plate with 3 types of cellophane wrapped cheese slices.

The son offers me one of his special sausages. Dude is proud of these babies and with good reason. They are swollen, sweating, bursting like hot dogs but fatter. He makes me two. I can't eat them so I leave them cooling on the plate like drowning fingers. Sorry, man.

We're listening to The Venga Boys, Roxette, Aqua.

Cake is delivered to the breakfast room. Cake approaching infinite mass. Time moves slowly around this cake. I age 23 years in the 7 minutes I'm near it. It has more raisins per square centimetre than should be legal. The lady who brought it looks disappointed that I take a slice and then don't eat it. Sorry, lady. 

This takes place in room with 6 lace-covered tables, with two militarily unfriendly, swarthy, violent looking, leather & jumper wearing gangster types, smoking like tyres, who presumably resist the urge to try and traffic me due to my pallid complexion and irritating accent. 

I want a taxi to work. None of them have a clue what I'm on about. Is this really so unusual? Person stays at hotel, needs a taxi to work? Lots of gesturing and trying to translate using the browser on their Nokia 4210. Eventually, I get to the office. I realise how far out of town we are, by the light of day. The roads are tracks, pot-holed, single storey breeze block buildings, graffiti on graffiti, boarded up, cages, mud. Feels kind of third world. But I'm in a proper taxi with a photo ID and everything so that's cool. Nothing costs a thing. 25 zlotys (about a fiver) for whatever you need. Chicken, carrots, vinegary food, a taxi ride. You won't need much cash. 

This isn't really about the hotel but I had to tell you - the work canteen where I ate at lunchtime had this menu item, scrawled in pencil on the wall one day:

'Ground Lobules (with frites)'

Not sure what it was. Tasted like deep fried human scalp, in vinegar. 

Next day they did two shapes of carrots (long thin / crinkle cut), tinned, cold, in vinegar. Mine had a pube in. Will tripadvisor let me say pube?

Every evening, the same. I get back to my room in this Lynchian wasteland and walk to the KFC for weird chicken. Two nights, I am awoken by the sounds of people rutting or cats being ill. Maybe the other way round. Maybe both. Can't be sure. Travel with earplugs.

Every morning, the same. Weird, minimal, vinegary breakfast, confusion and delay about taxis. Which of these individuals was making that noise last night? 

Apart from this morning, check out time. This morning, I'm looking forward to going home.

But they won’t let me leave. 4 females, prevent me leaving. I need to check out, I explain. No, you cant, they gesture. Ahhh OK why? They can't get me to understand. I still don't know, to this day. They call someone on the phone. He will explain. A gruff voice says WHAT IS PROBLEM. I do not know, I say. I want to go. Leave your bags, leave your passport, they gesture. I will not do that, I say. How much? I will pay for the room (which should already be paid) but they do not want money. They seem upset about something! I do not know what! 3 other people need to check out behind me. None of them can understand the problem and none of them are allowed to check out yet either. We draw pictures, words, numbers, but I cannot understand them and they cannot understand me. 

I've been detained by police in Mumbai, lost, alone, at midnight, in India, suspiciously at the wrong airport. Negotiating my way out of that was easier than this!

I explain that I am going, right now, and push past them, through the door to a waiting taxi. They yelled stuff  after me as I walked down the path. I'd love to know what caused this fiasco!  

If you are reading this, Hotel Hawana, please let me know what was going on, I'm sure you didn't mean to be as threatening and intimidating as you were!

I enjoyed the shower. 

I happily leave the rest of Bydgosczc far behind.

Hotel Hawana

Main amenities of the hotel

Location

Available rooms

Location

Description of the hotel

What other amenities are there?

General

Rooms

Accessibility

Services and amenities

Meals

Internet

Languages Spoken

Parking

Pool and beach

Pets

Policies

Check-in terms and conditions

Additional information

Payment