avoid cheap Cologne

First of all, Colmar is a beautiful, picturesque town and unlike the swiss, they do not hide their souvenirs so we bought lots of things! After lunch (we wisely figured "when in rome..." or france, as the case may be, and ate at noon) where cindy had quiche lorraine in alsace-lorraine and said it was the best she ever had -- we hit the road for germany. It was a long dull drive full of graffiti, power lines and construction. It seemed to take forever to get to cologne, where we were only staying because dusseldorf was all booked due to (I kid you not) a plastics exposition. I don't know what that is either. But when we got to cologne we found sketchy, confusing, constrction filled one way streets and finally our "hotel.". I put this in quotes because what we were actually met with was a storefront of some sort of internet/ cell phone company (and yet no computers were visible anwhere). Though we were dubious the man assured us we were in the right place and the store was indeed the reception for the hotel. We paid up front, and got our keys and instructions. As we headed two doors down on the questionable street, we faced a dark, creepy staircase with some old toys lying about and graffiti on the moldy walls. Uh-oh. The room itself was clean but bad bad juju abounded and cindy thought we were going to turn into a bad lifetime movie so... What to do? Cindy was so panicked that nothing less than five star american chains would be considered. After numerous calls to what limited options we had info on in the eyewitness germany book (clearly my germany on a budget book was out of the question), we found one room left for 250 euros at the sofitel bonn resort half an hour south (the opposite direction of dusseldorf). Naturally, that is where we are now, enjoying room service and a suite on our last hours here. But I better get some sleep as our ten-forty-five flight will now cause us to leave at 6:30 am... Oh and by the way, we had one problem once we booked our new luxury hotel... What to do with our room key? We were all paid up so that wasn't a problem but the key we were supposed to lrave in the drop box when we checked out. So, thinking of alice and her babushka, I covered my head with my scarf - I thought this would be a great disguise - ran up to the drop box, dumped the keys and made a mad dash for the car, where cindy was waiting, like an accomplice, to zoom off as the bewildered hotel owner watched. Crazy? Or perfectly reasonable response to the situation? You be the judge.