Crazy Hotel Elevator?

honestly that lurching stop is prob the old contactor relays, they get lazy after a few decades and need a nudge. if you wanna know for sure, check the cabin floor for a little metal plate with the manufacturer, i bet it says "Otis" or "Flohr" from the 20s. one thing people dont mention, those old lifts often have a hidden middle stop, a staff floor with the laundry or storage, and the button panel just skips it. ask the night porter, they always know and love telling the story. also, if the smell is really tobacco, it might be from the 50s when the smoking room was on the top floor and the shaft acted like a chimney.

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That lurching pause is almost certainly the old contactor relays warming up, they're famous for that in pre-war lifts. If you want a real answer, check the lift car's ceiling, a lot of these hotels hide the original manufacturer plate up there, usually "Flohr" or "Otis" from the 1920s. The tobacco smell is just decades of smoke soaked into the shaft grease, no amount of cleaning touches that. And honestly, if it's not listed, it's only a matter of time before someone replaces it with a silent modern box, so enjoy the creaks while they last.

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u might've been at one of the altbau hotels near rosenthaler platz, those have lifts that predate the wall and honestly the city just refuses to touch em. the lurching stop is prob the thermal relay kicking in, old motors overheat and need a minute, it's not gonna drop, just feels like it. if u wanna know if it's protected, check the hausordnung posted near the lobby, denkmalschutz buildings are required to show the notice, otherwise it's just berlin cheapness dressed up as charm. and yeah, the smell? that's the wood paneling soaked in 80 years of guest sweat and stale beer, no restoration fixes that, only a full gut job would and nobody's paying for that.

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Worth noting that Berlin street names have official umlaut and ß rules that trip people up, so a sign showing "Strasse" versus "Straße" is not actually a spelling error, just an older transcription. Same with "ue" versus "ü" (e.g. "Kantstrasse" vs "Kantstraße"), both are considered valid renderings and you'll see the ß version on the blue Schilder and the ss version on older plaques or in databases that predate Unicode. If the difference you're seeing is between those two forms, there's nothing to fix and both are technically correct.

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if the signs u mean are the old enamel ones on the house facades those are often protected as Baudenkmal so nobody's allowed to correct them even if the spelling is outdated. the binding version is whatever is in the Berliner Strassenverzeichnis plus the entry in the Liegenschaftskataster, so if u tell me the street i can point u to the right Bezirksamt Mitte or Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf page. tbh the merged district thing is real but the facade signs are a separate story, theyre basically museum pieces at this point

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honestly thats super common in Charlottenburg, the district offices were merged from older Bezirke and nobody ever fixed all the Schilder. if its a real street you can check the official strassenverzeichnis on berlin.de, that list is what the Burgeramt actually goes by. which street is it? some of the Kaiserdamm / Kantstrasse signs are notorious for this.

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