My Top 4 Favorite Hostel Memories

Posted on 18. Jul, 2010 by in Stories

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:

The One Where I Spent the Night with a German Swim Team

Hot
Creative Commons License 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.

What is YOUR Favorite Hostel Moment

Pin It

Tags:

38 Responses to “My Top 4 Favorite Hostel Memories”

  1. Corey W.

    18. Jul, 2010

    My favorite hostel moment? Well I have only stayed in a hostel once in my life while I was in Montreal. Best part was when we arrived we were informed that the room we were supposed to be staying in had been trashed by a guest who refused to leave. As a result, the staff put the four of us in the bed and breakfast portion of the hostel in thier Honeymoon Suite. For the same price we would have paid for the tiny room that had been trashed. Large private bathroom, private entrance to the kitchen, jacuzzi tub beside the king sized bed.

    Really enjoyed this post! Especially the picture of the swimmer. You lucky lucky girl.

    Reply to this comment

  2. Gray

    18. Jul, 2010

    That duckling story is darling, not just because of the ducklings, but the fact that you started out with a negative scenario that totally transformed into something positive–and one of your best memories. I love that.

    Reply to this comment

    • Steph

      18. Jul, 2010

      God those ducks were so amazing, I didn’t want to put them down! It was a neat glimpse into a different culture.

      Reply to this comment

  3. Michael

    18. Jul, 2010

    Having being sick from drinking too much and passed out on the bed, I woke up in the middle of the night with random items being thrown at me. One was right on target between my legs. I woke up still woozy but my hostel mates insisted I drank more. The night continued on till the morning hours. That’s the hostel life!

    Reply to this comment

  4. jon

    18. Jul, 2010

    Mine would have to be Christmas at the hostel where I was working when a couple decided to volunteer for two weeks and made the whole time a once in a lifetime event.. When they left we rented a bus and took the whole hostel out to La Rhonda in Old Town.. Too much fun!

    Reply to this comment

  5. Adventurous Kate

    18. Jul, 2010

    LOVE the story about the Germans! Holy hottness!

    Reminds me of the time in a London hostel when I woke up and realized I was surrounded by guys sleeping in nothing but their underwear and moneybelts!

    Reply to this comment

    • Steph

      19. Jul, 2010

      Haha, hostels do offer a lot of opportunities to see people in very… intimate states.

      Reply to this comment

  6. Kayling05

    18. Jul, 2010

    I had a fabulous time for 2 days in a hostel in San Francisco hanging out with my Australian roommate and another Aussie girl we met as well. We went out traveling around San Fran (Golden Gate park and bridge, Haight Ashbury etc), and hung out drinking in the basement of the hostel the 2nd night til about 3am with some English boys and a bunch of Germans (flight home wasn’t until the next afternoon, so it was all good :D )

    Reply to this comment

  7. Ramblingsaffie

    18. Jul, 2010

    My favourite hostel moment. Christening a brand new hostel in Plettenbery Bay, South Africa. It was so new that we were ‘forced’ to kill a few hours on the beach so that the paint could dry before we could move in. That night we christened the hostel’s bar on its fantastic deck overlooking the Indian Ocean. A great way to end a great trip.

    Reply to this comment

  8. Matt

    18. Jul, 2010

    I’ll never forget the three weeks I spent in an Istanbul hostel. The owner spoke no English and it was being managed by a really great backpacking couple from Texas.

    We spent literally every night having BBQs in the upstairs lounge where the owner would start a charcoal fire on the window ledge. By the end of night you could hardly see thanks to the BBQ and hookah smoke. When we weren’t BBQing we were drinking Raki and playing tavla!

    Reply to this comment

  9. Alison

    18. Jul, 2010

    I had the same problem in Ljubljana. I’ve stayed in two hostels there — one where I couldn’t find the entrance and another that was also 2,000 km from the city center. I’ve heard that the prison makes for a pretty interesting stay there, though.

    Reply to this comment

    • Steph

      19. Jul, 2010

      possibly the same hostel! Would love to check out the prison at some point.

      Reply to this comment

  10. Michael Tyson

    19. Jul, 2010

    Hi Steph,

    Thanks for the Iceland tip-off! You inspired me to do a bit of spontaneous research on the country and have already added three places in Iceland to my travel wish-list! Off to read your other posts on Iceland :)

    Michael

    Reply to this comment

  11. Michael Hodson

    19. Jul, 2010

    I love these stories — and the ones in the comments — BUT, everyone must remember and follow…. the hostel rules:

    http://su.pr/9i3nmA

    Enjoy.

    Reply to this comment

  12. Katie

    19. Jul, 2010

    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!

    Reply to this comment

  13. Holly

    19. Jul, 2010

    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.

    Reply to this comment

  14. Angela Noelle

    19. Jul, 2010

    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 ;)

    Reply to this comment

  15. Luke

    19. Jul, 2010

    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. :)

    Reply to this comment

  16. Hildergarn

    19. Jul, 2010

    Hahaha getting cool from a cold just by drinking some kind of magic drink… that’s sicks hehehe :D

    Reply to this comment

  17. ehalvey

    19. Jul, 2010

    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.

    Reply to this comment

  18. Paul

    20. Jul, 2010

    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.

    Reply to this comment

  19. Verity

    26. Jul, 2010

    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.

    Reply to this comment

    • Steph

      26. Jul, 2010

      This was an HI hostel called Berunes on the east coast of Iceland. I found all the HI hostels there to be SO nice!

      Reply to this comment

  20. Seattle Dredge

    12. May, 2011

    aw, the duck is adorable! That would have been an amazing birthday gift :D

    Reply to this comment

Leave a Reply