A wrought iron bunk bed in Berlin, Prague, and Budapest. What do they all have in common? You can be guaranteed you will be sleeping above or below a complete and total stranger. One cramped night together spent in the same un-air conditioned hostel, what could be more intimate than that? 

Lugging in my 60-kilo bag to a quaintly converted house in Lake Bled, Slovenia, I came to know Matt who snoozed above me for 7 hours, gave me some leftover croissants in the morning, and disappeared back to Venice for work.

It was a summer of trains and lakes, street food and bottle-of-wine-on-a-beach for me and my two friends in the summer of 2023. With great fun came the dire need to rest, and we of course took this as a reason to book 8-12 bed hostel rooms where conversation was currency and your new best pal was round every corner.

Matt, for all his kind gestures, seemed to have a habit of leaving his items teetering off the bed above me, and allowing one to fall each and every time I found myself drifting off to sleep. For all his personhood and probably fantastic achievements, the only memory I will ever have of him is his lacklustre attitude towards keeping things at the foot of his bed.

Doze chatted to Josh Band, CEO and blog owner of A Backpacker’s World, and he indeed echoed the noise issue. “I was in Bangkok, and the night before I was flying home there was a guy on his phone at 3am. He must’ve been shushed by me and others about 10 times, no exaggeration but he just kept nattering. He was told to go outside and didn’t, the most inconsiderate person I’ve ever met. No one in the dorm slept that night. I was knackered for my 18-hour journey home but at least I didn’t have to spend another night in the dorm with him!”

In many ways, you do kind of sign up for the noise, talking, clattering and snoring. I don’t think there’s anything worse than a hostel snorer; they aren’t your best mate, you can’t just waltz over and shove them. In Paris, I nearly did, but alas someone did the job for me. You could practically feel the sighs of relief from my neighbouring eight bunkers.

None of this made the experience of a hostel any less fundamental to me though. It was like a new world had opened out to me, oodles of new people, I could brush my teeth with them and laugh until the sun seeped through gauze-like curtains.

“90% of people in hostels are amazing,” says Josh. “But it’s the 10% who aren’t which leads to the reputation hostels have amongst people who have never stayed in them.”

“The people you meet make the ‘worse’ sleeping experience worth it.”

Besides, who needs sleep in a hostel anyway? That’s what the sunbathing is for.