An Australian doctor with a fondness for abusing prescriptions and some rather nasty surgery stories. A Dutch dental student who has lived in a hostel for two years, paying every night for a different bed. An Irishman who looked just like my AP Calculus teacher.
These are a few of the people I have encountered in hostels.
Whether you're traveling alone or with friends, get to know some of your fellow hostel-ites. Meeting people at a hostel is like speed-dating with travel buddies: One minute you're striking up a conversation as you put sheets on your bed, and the next you're heading out to investigate the nightlife of the city around you.
These people are lifesavers if you're alone. They become your disposable friends. They are willing to be in all your pictures so you don't look like a loser, to be your wingman so you don't look creepy, and best of all, you know that you'll never have to see these people again if you end up making a complete fool of yourself. Together, you unite in your ignorance of the native language and awkward encounters with the locals.
But even if you're staying with some friends in the hostel, do not immediately write these folks off as people you just hope won't snore or kill you in your sleep. Sure, your friends are great, and traveling with them is awesome, but isn't one of the big purposes of vacation to experience a break from the everyday? Why not shake up your usual dynamic by throwing a 20-something New Zealander into the mix?
And yes, there will be a New Zealander or an Australian. In any hostel, there will always be at least three people from Down Under. These blokes can prove to be most useful, considering the amount of knowledge they've acquired from their endless travels - and their accents and strange terminologies can provide hours of entertainment.
Sadly, not everyone you meet in a hostel is a boon to your trip. While I may seem like a bit of a jerk for what I'm about to write, it's true: Never trust anyone in a hostel who is over the age of thirty. While, conceivably, their choice may be economic, they tend to be serving a healthy helping of freak with a side of mid-life crisis.
In Marrakech, we were unfortunate enough to meet Kris, a paranoid 60-year-old New Zealander who seemed like she would be the perfect candidate for "annoying visiting relative" on a sitcom. She spent two hours of our first night on the roof of our hostel questioning our happiness with our lives and putting the fear of God into us concerning everything Moroccan.
In Istanbul, a 50-year-old man spent day after day in his bed on his laptop. Why he had to come to Turkey for that puzzles me.
And then there was Vienna, where my friend and I found ourselves not only facing a German man with a bomber jacket and a definite scent of "I've just run off on my wife and kids to go around Europe for a month to recapture my youth," but also a mother-and-son duo from Japan - families sleeping in hostels just seems wrong - who slept from 4 p.m. to 4 a.m. And all three surpassed any prior snorers in skill.
But as long as you stick to the crowd of young people who are only on the verge of messing up their lives, be social during your hostel time. You may only know these folks for a few days, but you can tell stories about them forever. And who knows - maybe they're telling stories about you now.
Devin Toohey is a junior majoring in classics. He can be reached at Devin.Toohey@tufts.edu.
