There is a strong divide in opinion on hostels. There are those people who absolutely love them and the people who think they are cheap and dirty lesser versions of hotels where you are likely to be robbed, kidnapped and tortured (thank you, Eli Roth). The latter opinion is mostly held by people who have never even set foot in a hostel, but they couldn’t be more wrong.
I knew nothing about hostels before I went travelling and had no idea what I’d let myself in for, but I have honestly stayed in some of the nicest, cleanest and most fun places I’ve ever come across and I wouldn’t have wanted to stay anywhere else when travelling.
Yes, some hostels aren’t brilliant, and some research is definitely required, but with websites like Hostel World it is so easy to find some really modern hostels to suit all of your needs. It is definitely the best option if you are a solo traveller, like me.
Who wants to sit in a hotel room all alone and end up paying tons of money on mini-bar snacks when you want drunk food at 5am? At hostels you meet tons of like minded people, make new connections and find out all of the best places, tips and tricks that you can use along your travels. Plus, most hostels have a great social side such as a bar, themed nights and walking tours, usually free or for a small cost.
Hostel life can be classed as a type of community. Since being in Barcelona I have returned time and time again to the hostel I stayed at when I was on my travels because I found a family within it. I truly feel at home there, and whenever I am feeling sad or homesick all I have to do is go down to the hostel and have a few drinks with some of the wonderful people that are passing through and it reminds me why I love that lifestyle so much.
If you are considering staying in hostels on your travels, I really urge you to give it a try. There are different types of hostels depending on what you’re looking for such as party hostels or more relaxed atmospheres, but wherever you stay, you’ll soon learn how these places work.
So in this article I am going to give you a few heads up about what to expect from your hostel experience. These are mostly things from my own experiences of staying in hostels and the type of “hostel etiquette” I have learnt along the way.
ROOMS
There are many different types of rooms you can get in a hostel. Private, dorms, mixed, same-sex, en suite, and it’s important to choose what you’re most comfortable with. In order to get the most out of your experience, I recommend throwing yourself right into the mix. I always choose a large (12 beds usually) mixed dorm.
Now, this isn’t for everyone, and maybe not the most appealing idea to a hostel virgin, but while I was travelling I began to realise that usually your roommates become your besties for the duration of your time there, thus, the bigger the room, the more friends you will make. Some places I ended up in a four or six person room and if you don’t get like minded people, you’re screwed. Or worse, when you are a solo traveller in a room this small you are likely to be put with a group of travellers who tend not to be as open to making new friends.
There is nothing worse than coming home from Oktoberfest at 5am to a room full of people sleeping, only to be woken up by alarms an hour later because they are getting up to go on a ten mile hike or something equally as fucking ridiculous. On the other end of the scale, there is also nothing worse than coming down with the flu and having to share a room with thirteen drunken men for four days. The smell was like nothing I’ve ever experienced. Swings and roundabouts, hey?
PHONES
I have lost count of the amount of times I have had to rummage around strangers beds, still half drunk, looking for that fucking alarm that is making us all want to kill ourselves. I honestly don’t know how people manage to sleep through a fucking fog horn going off right in their ear, but it happens.
Save everyone the upset and just don’t set your alarm for an unrealistic time. You went to bed at 7am, do you really think you are going to be in line for Anne Frank’s house at 8.30? Absolutely fucking not. If you have a really early flight or train to catch, just don’t even go to bed, you are only going to cause further disturbance as you fall out of your bunk, half dressed and cursing the fact you slept through your alarm and missed it.
If this does happen, the best thing to do is to just go back to sleep until the hostel staff come and kick you out because it’s after check out time, then attempt to make new travel arrangements. Not that this happened to me or anything.
Similarly, any kind of phone activity in the early hours is just not acceptable. It doesn’t matter what kind of hostel you’re staying at, no one wants to listen to you face-timing your bros back in Sydney at 4am about the hot Polish girl whose vagina you are planning to “put it in”. We are trying to sleep. Fuck off.
SEX
Sex in hostels can be tricky, but it’s going to happen. The general etiquette is that you go in the showers or somewhere else other than the dorms (unless you have a private room, of course). There is still a high chance of being caught and many a sex tape has probably been produced from various hostels CCTV cameras, but that’s all part of the fun, right? It’s just common decency not to fuck someone when there are complete strangers sleeping directly beneath you/above you/everywhere around you.
Furthermore, if you were not lucky enough to find someone to hook up with, please refrain from any other inappropriate behaviour in a shared room. I had the displeasure of waking up to that wet slapping sound of sex one morning, only to have the horrifying realisation that it was actually a girl I can only describe as furiously masturbating in the bunk opposite me. It was like 6am, I mean COME ON. If you are that desperate, like I said...showers are there for a reason. I am now scarred for life.
And to those people not getting any at all, please leave the rest of us in peace and don’t be a cock block. I really don’t believe you want to use the common room at 5.30am to sit on your phone scrolling through Facebook, you just want to get a cheeky peek at some people banging. Isn’t it past your bed time, little boy?
SHOWERS
On that note, make sure you check the signs on the showers before entering! All hostels are different, but some have separate showers for men and women. I made a terrible mistake in Rome of not looking at the signs and got very mixed reactions as I emerged from the men’s shower and proceeded to stand at the mirror in my underwear while I dried my hair. Oops.
In some cases people may purposely choose to use the wrong bathroom. In a hostel in Prague men seemed all too often to be using the women’s bathrooms, for a number of obvious reasons such as the greater cleanliness of them, and the naked women... but I do not appreciate having to resort to tip-toeing into the men’s showers which smelled of piss and looked like I could probably catch several STI’s just from breathing in the air. Gross.
FREE LOVE
Share everything. Your food/drink/stories/photos/any other substances. Everything!
The best part about staying in a hostel is sharing the experience with other people. When you check in to a room; introduce yourself, when you go down to the bar; sit with a group of people and find out where they are from. When you stay at a hostel everyone is instantly best friends and you treat each other like family. A hostel is an environment where my faith in humanity and kindness is restored because there is no judgement from anyone; everyone is just there to have a good time.
I made some friends for life just from offering a glass of wine to someone sat on their own, or offering some asprin to that guy with the colossal hangover, or cooking a feast of pizza and chicken with a group of strangers at 4am. It doesn’t take much to bond with someone when travelling solo.
