Zürich Hotel Crush: Sleeping cheap at Zum Guten Glück
European budget hands know well the financial horrors of traveling in Switzerland. There is almost no way to spend time in the country without blowing a huge hole in your wallet. Yet here, in the country’s largest city, you can snag a nice single room at Zum Guten Glück for just 69 CHF ($70; €63) a night.
Located upstairs from a restaurant-bar of the same name, Zum Guten Glück is that rarest of Swiss birds: a cheap and stylish place in Zurich to bed down for the night.
Related: All budget hotels in Zurich
Rooms: Simple & stylish
My room was spotless, with a single bed with a pillow and duvet – comfortable and austere in its simplicity, a single golden spotlight above the bed for reading.
The floor, painted gray, is offset with a woven black-and-white rug with a diamond pattern. Two stools, a pile of towels, and a vintage bedside table complete the selection. A well-designed white globe of a lamp hangs above, illuminating everything. My window overlooked an internal courtyard displaying a horizon of cars, bikes, and maintenance equipment: utilitarian but not unpleasant.
The interior of Room 4. Photo: Courtesy of Zum Guten Glück
Amenities
This is not luxury by any definition. There’s no television in the room. (But honestly, does anyone watch television on a television anymore? There is a fast internet connection at Zum Guten Glück for that in any case.)
For this nightly rate, you will also have to share a toilet and a shower. And while in a general way I prefer to have a private toilet and shower, it’s no huge loss to share both from time to time, especially in a guesthouse as aesthetically pleasing and inarguably inexpensive as this one.
A Low price for an expensive city
Part of the magic of Zum Guten Glück is, of course, the thrill of getting away with such a low nightly rate in Zürich. It certainly felt like a steal after my two meals in the city – the first, at the vegetarian restaurant Hiltl, set me back around 30 CHF ($31; €27) for a plate of vegetarian buffet items and a glass of wine; the second, at a mediocre sushi restaurant, cost me about 80 CHF ($82; €73) for two smallish plates of sashimi. Neither of these restaurants, it should be said, would be considered expensive in the context of Zürich.
Room 9 with a king-sized bed. Photo: Courtesy of Zum Guten Glück
Glancing back at the Zum Guten Glück listing on EuroCheapo, I find a distinctly mediocre review. This forces me to acknowledge, again, that my enthusiasms are sometimes only my own and nobody else’s. Then again, things change. The main criticism in the original review is of the sullen staff, but the people I interacted with at the guesthouse were both friendly and helpful. Perhaps the staff has either turned over or been retrained since the original reviewer’s visit.
The neighborhood
The guesthouse’s hodgepodge of a neighborhood, Wiedikon, houses a synagogue and a handful of interesting shops. It’s adjacent to the southern end of Langstrasse, rather satisfyingly the seediest bit of central Zürich, which heaves with nighttime activity. A few blocks from the guesthouse is the Wiedikon train station. Trains from Wiedikon take all of two minutes to reach Zürich’s main train station.
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