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| Vancouver, through a dirty ferry window. |
I'd booked into SameSun Backpacker Lodge. Now, this was not my first time staying in a hostel, and to be honest, I thought I'd experienced it all. But this particular hostel experience never fails to make me feel uncomfortable just by thinking back to the time and what took place.
Arriving in hostel rooms, I always have a feeling of excitement and trepidation. There's something very relieving about arriving at your accommodation - you've successfully navigated from one city to another, navigated the streets, checked in without drama, hauled your luggage up the stairs, the room key works - and for me, there's nothing nicer than swinging that door open, finding your bed (whether it be allocated or the bed you decide will be yours) and being able to dump your belongings, get settled in, and then turn to the fun part - exploring a new city. At SameSun I was greeted by a score of Australians at reception - as I've learned a common fair in Canada. I'm surprised that there are any 18 - 35 year old Australians left in Australia, because from my experience, they're all in the UK or Canada! I vividly recall having a laugh at check in, I don't quite remember what it was about but I remember walking about thinking that I'd lucked out with a hostel with a really great vibe from the staff. So I was in a cheerful mood as I did that luggage haul up the stairs, and swung the door open to look in the four bed dormitory.
Have you seen that episode of Friends where Ross dates the really disgustingly messy hot paleontologist? Here, go check it out. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6yWpB2m7Cc
I'm not a tidy person, I'll concede this. I'm the kind of person, at home, who takes off my clothes to get changed and tosses them on the floor; who throughout the course of the day will have used my bed to do my hair, read a book, watch DVDs, eat food, and all of the random brushes, DVD cases, novels and plates will just be put on the floor at the end of the day. I expect hostels to be clean. I expect the people living there to maintain a decent standard, and to essentially utilise their own space. When you're a hostel, the area under your bed and at the ends of the bed are shared between you and person in the bunk above/below. There should be a general pathway from the door and around the room.
With the exception of the actual bed that I was designated, every single inch of the room was covered with.... stuff.
I'm not talking about a backpacker being in the middle of repacking or just coming back from doing laundry.
There were piles and pile and piles of clothes, shoes and handbags. Right by a sign stating that there should be no food or drink in the room, there were plates, glasses, empty beer cans. The garbage bin was overflowing. There was no room anywhere, other than literally the space it took the door to open, and even then, it was pushing back a few things behind the door. There was no space for my luggage.
The room was empty.
Whoever it was who had created the mess had created a disaster and left.
Very, very, very gingerly I used my foot to push aside things to make enough room for my suitcase by the wall. Very, very, very gingerly I created a path so I could go to my bed to make it up and leave a couple of things around, just enough so that it was obvious that someone else had checked into the room. All I could do was hope that whenever the inhabitants came back, that they cleaned up quick smart.
I went out, and purposely stayed out until dinner time, wanting to make sure I was allowing enough time that they could conceivably have come back.
With a feeling of trepidation, I swung open the door, and was surprised at the lack of pressure, assuming that perhaps at a minimum the whole area around the door was clear. The lights were out, the curtains were drawn but they weren't block out curtains and it wasn't dark yet, so there was dim lighting. I felt relief because I could tell that, despite not being spotless, there was nonetheless some effort made to tidy things up. I knelt down by my luggage, and then out of the corner of my eye, I saw movement.
And then, I realised that there was movement in the bottom bunk across from mine, in direct view from the door.
Movement from not one person, but from two.
Two distinctly feminine shapes.
People have sex in youth hostels. It's not like it happens every single night, but it happens. In Prague, the girl in the bed above me thought it appropriate to wake me up at 4am when she came back from a pub crawl, clearly drunk, and she brought a guest with her. I'm not sure if one of them was just jumping down and getting back up and jumping down and getting back up for exercise, to retrieve condoms, or what - but they were not being at all respectful or discreet. But this is generally how it happens, at least, in my experience - you'll hear distinctive creaks and noises in the still of the night.
Never, ever, ever before had I walked into my hostel room only caring about whether I would be entering into a pigsty; and been confronted early in the evening by a girl's head popping up from where she had been crouching hovering above her female partner.
I stammered, grabbed my netbook that was fortunately in view, and hightailed out of there.
I managed to avoid these girls for almost 24 hours - when I came back at 9pm they were out, they came back in while I was asleep and I woke up before they woke up - they were both asleep together in the bottom bunk, with the top bunk above them and above mine both vacant. It was only late the next afternoon as I returned back with an armful of laundry I'd grabbed to get organised before heading out to find dinner, that I was greeted by one of them in the room.
She was very apologetic, both about the pigsty and about her and her girlfriend. Apparently she had found herself literally homeless and without money - she was a British girl doing the work visa/backpacking thing, and had been in a regular job but hadn't been very financially responsible. Long story short was that a couple of days earlier she'd moved into the hostel and was sharing a bed with her girlfriend while she waited for some cash to come through from home. I don't disbelieve her story but for me it wasn't quite an excuse for the state the room was in - given that the entire room was covered in stuff when there was only one bed actually occupied at the time. We had a bit of a laugh and things were slightly better - at least now, I wasn't feeling beyond awkward about entering my own hostel dorm!
However, I couldn't quite look her or her girlfriend in the eye.
