Michelberger Hotel

Time and again we’ve seen stylish hotels pitch themselves to the creative class, and then price themselves too high for their intended audience to afford. It’s even more important in Berlin — a town whose much-vaunted hipness has everything to do with its relatively modest cost of living — that the hip hotels make allowances for guests with more taste than cash. Enter the Michelberger, where bankers and lawyers are by no means excluded, but neither is anyone else.

The team behind the hotel, including the eponymous Mr. Michelberger, were hospitality-industry virgins, and the amateur spirit is everywhere in evidence. There’s a distinct lack of designer furniture, plenty of unfinished surfaces, and indeed more than a few intentionally rough edges, which are intentional. Some boutique hotels are so impeccably composed that it’s possible to feel as though you’re spoiling the tableau with your very presence — not here.

At their smallest the rooms are designed for a solo traveler or a very intimate couple, while at their largest they’re fit for a rock band or a small sports team. As for comforts they start out basic, and never really cross into territory you’d call luxurious. The atmosphere, likewise, is a bit more anything-goes than at the more buttoned-up high-end boutiques, and the restaurant is more ambitious-casual than fine dining, with fresh organic fare and plenty of vegan and vegetarian options. If you’re a bit of a diva about where and how you sleep — and we all are from time to time — you may be put off by the general conviviality of it all. But if you manage to somehow find the Michelberger dull, then we can probably recommend a good psychiatrist. Best of all you’re left with the sense that the profit motive is not foremost in your hosts’ motivations — get in before they change their minds.