{"id":560,"date":"2025-05-21T17:14:18","date_gmt":"2025-05-21T16:14:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jusmedia.co.uk\/doze\/?p=560"},"modified":"2025-06-06T15:56:04","modified_gmt":"2025-06-06T14:56:04","slug":"the-hostel-diaries-sleeping-with-strangers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jusmedia.co.uk\/doze\/2025\/05\/21\/the-hostel-diaries-sleeping-with-strangers\/","title":{"rendered":"The hostel diaries: Sleeping with strangers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The hostel gallery<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

For all his kind gestures, Matt 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Doze chatted to Josh Band, CEO and blog owner of A Backpacker\u2019s World, and he indeed echoed the noise issue. \u201cI was in Bangkok, and the night before I was flying home, there was a guy on his phone at 3 am. He must\u2019ve been shushed by me and others about 10 times, no exaggeration but he just kept nattering. He was told to go outside and didn\u2019t, the most inconsiderate person I\u2019ve ever met. No one in the dorm slept that night. I was knackered for my 18-hour journey home but at least I didn\u2019t have to spend another night in the dorm with him!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In many ways, you do kind of sign up for the noise, talking, clattering and snoring. I don\u2019t think there\u2019s anything worse than a hostel snorer; they aren\u2019t your best mate, you can\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201c90% of people in hostels are amazing,\u201d says Josh. \u201cBut it\u2019s the 10% who aren\u2019t which leads to the reputation hostels have amongst people who have never stayed in them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe people you meet make the \u2018worse\u2019 sleeping experience worth it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Besides, who needs sleep in a hostel anyway? That\u2019s what sunbathing is for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For more on active sleepers:<\/p>\n\n\n\n