How to Survive Hostelling

It's not that rough. I've never slept on a dirt floor, always had some sort of mattress and running water, but even so, living a backpacker's life can get you down. Hostels mean a cheap place to sleep, and often, nothing more. Hostels can be dirty, loud, and lacking privacy. It might make you reminisce for family vacations when your parents let you keep the complimentary shower caps (what a frivolity, a backpacker might think) your family's hotel provided.

Hostelling is a great way to save money while traveling. It allows you to save money, meet new friends, perhaps even provides you with a kitchen to cook in or a bar or café-to eat and drink and socialize. Staff will usually provide directions, advice, and sometimes a map.

But it's not so easy. Back home, my bathroom has so many toiletries it might seem as if more than one person lived with me, and my family makes jokes about my large wardrobe. I can be a picky eater and my kitchen pantry is often brimming with food.

So I am not the ideal backpacker candidate, and the notion of a hostel was vague-I had only stayed in a hostel once, in a private room with my boyfriend, so I was in for a shock.

After backpacking around Europe for nearly four months, and staying in hostels in nearly every place I've visited, I have some advice to share. Hostelling is great, but it can get bad. At times, like everything else, it can get you down.

Here's some tips:

• When you get down, if you can afford it, spoil yourself by getting a room of your own at a budget hotel with your own bathroom. Amenities like television and air conditioning jack up the price, but it might be just worth it-you decide. Solitude and privacy are two things you will value at the end of your trip.


• Twenty people sharing one toilet can be dirty and annoying. In some cities, two people can easily afford a budget hotel room-often for less than the price of a hostel for two people would be. Opt out of the larger dorms for the smaller rooms of four or six people with an en-suite bathroom-smaller rooms are usually more quiet and cleaner.


• Hostels are noisy, even at night. Snoring, disrespectful roommates, and drunken shouting can wake you. Earplugs and headphones are extremely helpful when drowning out noise. Eyeshades are good for those roommates who decide to turn on the lights at three a.m. You'll be sleeping in the same room with many different people from different places on different schedules. Earplugs and eyeshades also provide a sense of privacy.


• Take advantage of everything your hostel has to offer. Cook in the hostel kitchen, hang around the bar and lounge chatting people up, ask staff for recommendations, watch free movies, go on walking tours, borrow a bike-whatever the hostel offers, go for it.


• If you get sick of all of the English-speaking people at your hostel, and feel as if you aren't getting a flavor for local life, ditch the hostel. Hang around town-find out where the locals go and befriend them. Remember: friendships can be accomplished, regardless of language barriers that might exist.


• Act like the hostel is your home (within reason, of course). Do the things you would do back home like paint your nails, pluck your eyebrows, pray, or sleep with your teddy bear. Your routines will make you feel more comfortable.


• When times get hard, spoil yourself. Eat at a nice restaurant where there are no backpackers, ordering several courses. Talk on a phone card to someone back home until it runs out. Go to a department store and spray yourself with perfume. Go to a yoga class-just do something to cheer yourself up.

Hostelling isn't easy, but I love it. I've ended up discarding much of my clothes and toiletries upon my return, as I like being lower maintenance.

Halfway through my trip, I met an American about to go home. He was depressed: "Most of all, I'll miss meeting new people every night. I'm going to go home and it will just be me in my apartment." Hostelling is a brilliant way to make new friends-friends who live around the world. Next time when you're in their neck of the woods, you can stay with your new friends, and skip the hostels.

Article added on September 30, 2005

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