Hostels

My next night in Paris, I moved to a hostel. The price actually comes out to about the same as a cheap Airbnb, sadly, even with those large dorm rooms, but the social element does add a certain spice to traveling, especially as a "young-adult."

Hostels are a really unique social situation. Everyone there is ostensibly available to chat, because they have something in common with you, and because staying in a place where you've accepted to sleep through a stranger's snoring means you'll probably put up with an awkward get-to-know-you conversation as well. Some hostels are better than others at stimulating this kind of connection. In Paris, there was a table which met every day at 5:00pm where new-comers could get a free drink and meet each-other. I wandered over to this table a little late, and was surprised to find the crew fairly lit up already. I took the seat of someone who left, and soon found one quite loud USC law-school student from the States leaning into my shoulder for balance as she filled her cup with more Franzia. She spoke fondly of the turnt hostel she'd just come from in London. People screwing in bathrooms, others passing out, many bodily fluids, all that jazz. After the group was chatting for a while, things sorted themselves into a rather intense drinking game to my left with the Law Student and a group of boisterous Londoners, and then a conversation about the specifics of football (soccer) which I couldn't even begin to join in on. I found myself caught between the two currents, not too drawn to either. Across from me was a young woman from Austria who seemed shy, or maybe she just didn't speak very good English. Her eyes were like two green lakes; they took everything in, unblinking. She seemed similarly isolated by these options.

As the drinking game fizzled out, the law student asked the Austrian gal if she'd join them in going clubbing.

After getting a meager yes, she says, "Do you have something more revealing? If you're going to go party you've gotta show boobs and butt. Do you have that?"

The Austrian smiles and looks confused. I imagine she understood the question but found it brazen. The USC student takes her silence as a language barrier, and grasps her body parts for clarity: "you know, boobs! and butt!"

The Austrian quietly affirms, smiling. Unfortunately, the Law student didn't make it to the clubs that night. She started nodding off at the table beside me from too much too fast. I nudged her awake.

"You doing okay?"

"Yeah I just need a nap," she said with her eyes closed. And after a beat or two, she stirs slightly, "I wanna see the Eiffel Tower! Lezz go to the Eiffel Tower."

I got absorbed in another conversation, and when I looked back to check on her, she'd vanished. I suppose she'd called it a night, or maybe managed to rally. Poor thing -- she said it was her first time alone in Europe. This seemed to be an inauspicious start. I'd like to say that she was an exception, but Americans do have a way of representing themselves as a little uncouth. We are unruly and opinionated creatures of chaos and bloat, and apparently it is not enough to be surrounded by foreign eyes to feel ashamed of this.

In hostels you have the same conversation many times over. What is your name? Where are you from? How long are you traveling for? Where have you been? Where are you going? How long are you staying here for? Then, if no good stories come up, things generally develop into political conversations. I have not encountered nearly as many American (that is, people from the United States--it seems conceited that we call ourselves after the continent we are from) travelers as I expected to. That means, I often find myself in the unique position of having to explain the American political climate to a table of outsiders all by my self, and I found that to be a delightful challenge.

To participate in these hostel conversations for a week or so is enjoyable, but they get tiresome. There are some long term travelers (most often from Australia because it is so hard for them to get out of their country and so they live an austere life for a few years and then go ham) whose stamina for this lifestyle truly baffles me. After two weeks of this, I was ready to hole up in a hot bath and forget the world. That said, I feel deeply enriched by the anecdotes I received from these travelers and their perspective on things, political or otherwise. I learned fascinating things about the successes and failures of other governments, the ubiquity of corruption/xenophobia/nationalism (yes, even in your beloved Scandinavia (although let's be honest, they are doing a lot of things right)), and the general awe about Trump's election in the States.

When they are not socializing with other travelers, people in hostels are generally sleeping or trying to. Getting good sleep surrounded by strangers in the August 35 degree heat (that's right, welcome to Celsius everyone, we're in Europe now) is a real trick for a hypersensitive paranoiac like me. I found some workable combination of earplugs, eye mask, minimal sheet coverage, and trips to the bathroom to wet my washcloth which I then placed upon my neck or my chest or my thigh between fits of sleep.

***

I do not know if I dreamt it or if it happened.
Above a chorus of snores
that rattled the ten bed coed hostel room,
some homesick Irish soul starts muttering
in her sleep,
and it ascends the vocal register
until her words sustain and waiver
slow sweet alto--
a song is born in the muggy dark,
some familiar lilting thing.

As down the glen one Easter morn
To a city fair rode I
There armed lines of marching men
In squadrons passed me by
No fife did hum, no battle drum
Did sound its dred tattoo
But the Angelus bells o'er the Liffey's swell
Rang out through the foggy dew

I roll over and wrap the thin rough pillow around my head to get my sleep.