While I countdown days and hours and make endless preparations for my upcoming trip, I’ve also been spending some time reminiscing about my past travels and what’s unique about the spirit and fun of backpacking. This got me thinking about all of the strange funny things that have happened to me while staying in hostels.
A lot of people are unnecessarily scared of hostels but I am a big fan. Not only are they cheap and convenient, but also when you get that many random strangers smooshed together in one spot you are bound to come out with some crazy stories. Here 4 of my favorites so far:
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The One Where I Spent the Night with a German Swim Team
photo credit: Life of Sport
My friend Jason and I were trying to do St. Patrick’s Day in Dublin on a budget- not an easy feat. The 18-bed dormitory sounded like an amusing and cheap idea beforehand.
The room looked like a military barracks or maybe prison- bunk beds crammed into every available space. But what really stopped me dead in my tracks was the small army of very buff boys in various states of undress. Apparently we were sharing the room with 16 members of a German swim team. And apparently they were not aware the room was co-ed… hello Speedos.
The One Where I Didn’t Understand the Metric System
“Only 2000 meters to the city center!” the website boasted. Well that didn’t seem too far.
“That’s 2 Kilometers” my boyfriend corrected me as we struggled through Ljubljana, hot packs on our backs.
The One Where I Learned How to Cure the Common Cold
I rolled into Zagreb late in the evening, pursued by a sniffling sneezing ugly cold (part of my ongoing battle with the Tonsils of Doom). It was the custom in many of the hostels in South Eastern Europe to greet guests with a complimentary shot of the local Rakia (a strong fruit brandy). The first time I’d gulped it down, weeks before, I could have breathed fire. I wanted nothing more than to crawl into my lower bunk and die but the hostels owner, a friendly Chinese-Croatian man was not having it. “You must have drink,” he insisted. “Good for sickness.”
I declined but he persisted so finally, out of politeness I downed the shot. “Another.” Okay, one more. Only then did he let me go off to my dormitory and collapse, kicking myself for my poor willpower.
But damndest thing, when I woke up the next morning that cold was history. I felt fantastic.
The One Where I Made Best Friends with a Duck
In case you didn’t catch it in my previous posts (link) Iceland is really, really, empty. This is especially true of the misty east coast, a relatively untouristy corner of Iceland about as far from Reykjavik as you can get. Here we stayed in a converted farmhouse/hostel owned by a farmer and his family. To our consternation after arriving at about 3 pm we were at least an hour from the nearest town with literally nothing to do. The only other residents of our hostel were 5 American frat boys we’d been avoiding like the plague since Monday (they seemed to have the exact same road trip itinerary as us).
Skulking around in search of a distraction we found the owner’s 13-year-old granddaughter, sitting on the front stoop talking to her pet ducklings. They were her birthday present she told me, she’d stolen the eggs from a nest on the coast and hatched them herself. She would spend the summer raising them and then they would be released to the wild before she went back to school in Reykjavik. I can’t remember what I got for MY 13th birthday but it was nothing as cool as that!
“Do you want to hold one?” She asked me. DO I?!?! They were literally 1 day old. All the fuzzy happiness of 10,000 Easters nuzzled sweetly into my hand.
The point of telling you this is not that I’m a loquacious airhead who likes German boys. I wanted to illustrate that travel is about far more than just the sites you see. When you are a young traveler staying in hostels, your experiences are just as much about the people you meet as the things you do. The things that happen in between your sightseeing are the things you will remember best.
aw, the duck is adorable! That would have been an amazing birthday gift 😀
It was so fuzzy… sigh…
Loved the memories. How funny about the German boys :). I have also managed to cure a cold with extremely strong schnapps in Austria (it was called rocket fuel).
The place that you stayed in Iceland… was it at Husey? I stayed at the most beautiful farm hostel in the middle of nowhere there which had it’s own baby seal in the pond in the back (they had rescued it after it’s mother died). The sun never set but there was a full moon hanging above this sunset, pink sky. In the morning we drank fresh milk and had scrambled duck eggs. Unfortunately we only stayed one night. I would love to go back and stay for a month. Iceland is my favourite place.
This was an HI hostel called Berunes on the east coast of Iceland. I found all the HI hostels there to be SO nice!
Most hilarious thing that ever happened to me was in a shitty guesthouse/hotel room in Montanita, Ecuador. There were about 5 of us in this tiny cramped room that had a back porch which overlooked another house. I came back early and a couple of hours later, the rest of the crew rolled back, completely shit-faced.
All of a sudden I hear this *CRASH* of broken glass. I literally thought it was thunder in our room. Turns out, one of the guys had walked onto the balcony, hopped over it onto the roof of another house and FELL right through the roof into some poor dude’s bathroom.
He’s standing there in some random person’s BATHROOM, completely wasted, in only his boxers, with pieces of the roof all around him, wondering “WTF” just happened. When we finally grasped the situation, all of us nearly suffocated from laughter.
Good times.
As the peeps in Nashville say, those ducklings are so stinking cute!!
My favorite hostel memory really wasn’t AT the hostel per se, but at the house of the owners. A get together turned into a traditional Irish music session which was great craic. Sometimes, hanging with the owners can give you a much more fun experience than with the lodgers.
Yeah hostels are great places to meet the locals.
Hahaha getting cool from a cold just by drinking some kind of magic drink… that’s sicks hehehe 😀
I should totally market it.
I have far too many fond memories of my hostel experiences to pick one out and post here but I just had to let out an exclamation at your duck post. Yet another reason to push Iceland up on my list of “must-see” destinations!
Thanks for this, I had a right laugh reading it. 🙂
I had never watched an episode of Dawson’s Creek before I went to Ireland in 2001, but I became OBSESSED with it after spending hours in our hostel common room catching up on all of the backstory and watching a marathon running on some Irish version of the CW. It was awesome hearing all about Dawson, Pacey, and Joey from German, Irish, and Australian girls 😉
Sounds like me in college 🙂
It was my first night staying at this hostel in Rio de Janeiro, and we decided to head down to the bar that is attached to the hostel that night to get our drink on. Well, I got pretty liquored on caipirina’s and started making friends at the bar. I recognized the bartender as the same bartender up at our hostel so I started chatting to him and his buddy, who was a local who did not speak a word of english. I was rambling on and on about god knows what to this guy, and eventually it was only him standing there ‘listening’ to me. He must have taken something I said as an invitation to start making out with my neck because before I knew it I was trapped in the middle of a tall dark brazilian’s embrace. I managed to swing around and caught a glimpse of a friend from the hostel and motioned to her to come to my rescue, and was successful.
The next day at the hostels breakfast I was regailing our group with the story from last night in the lineup for bread. Finally I’m at the front of the line, and who should be on the other side of the counter serving up the fruit and bread – but the tall dark affectionate brazilian man from last night. As I stood there frozen, he plopped some watermelon and a slice of bread onto my tray and give me a smile and a wink. I hustled back to our table and exclaimed “thats the guy from last night! serving breakfast!!” Everyone at the table just cracked up in laughter. Between chuckles someone managed to say “dude… thats the hostel OWNER…”. “Should have went with it and you could have stayed here for free!”
I spend the next 5 days avoiding winks and grins, and no, I did not get a discount on my room rate… but I do have a good story to tell.
haha, that’s a GREAT one!
I actually just got back from a trip last week. While we were in London, I was woken up twice by the middle-aged Spanish speaking women falling off her bed into mine (on top of me!) in the middle of the night and then limping off to the bathroom. What a way to wake up!
hahah I’m sorry but that is GREAT
I love these stories — and the ones in the comments — BUT, everyone must remember and follow…. the hostel rules:
http://su.pr/9i3nmA
Enjoy.
yes- rules of hostel courtesy are oh so important!