hostel life.

Luxury apartment. Hotel. Hostel. Camping. Park bench.

If you asked the average holidaymaker how they would list their preferred accommodation for a well-deserved holiday, I imagine this would be the popular response. And bang in the middle is the hostel, sitting pretty as a cheap and cheerful bridge between privacy and poverty, pomp and penury. However, the hostel is now shaking off its age-old reputation as a poor man’s hotel for, well, the poor, and is embracing its new life as the place to stay for young backpackers. And having lived and worked in one for 10 weeks, I can see why…

Upon stepping into reception, you realise that a hostel is a somewhat odd entity, as it resembles some form of international social portal. With its continuous check-ins and check-outs, and the lugging of bags and tired eyes, it may look like an exclusive Club 18-30 airport. And with its multi-national clientele shoving their passports into the desk staff’s faces, it may appear to be some kind of all-in-one international embassy. But once you’ve grabbed your complementary map and are sat in the common room, you immediately become the new neighbour in the community, the latest mystery guest who no-one knows where he’s from or where he’s going next. And this is when the portal really opens its doors, as you quickly immerse yourself in an exchange of travel tip-offs and tales between seasoned travellers and rookie adventurers that defy the crazed myriad of accents and languages…

Where Russian meets Spanish, English meets Korean, French meets Dutch. The clash of languages is one bruising barrier to breach, or at least stumble over, within this social circle. Some conversations prosper with the help of hand signals and gestures, whilst others fall by the wayside in an awkward pile of elongated pronunciations and raised voices. But if we can’t manage to share a conversation, we’re inevitably going to be sharing everything else…

In abandoning the privacy of an exclusive hotel room, embracing the communal nature of a hostel entails the sharing of bedrooms, kitchens, bathrooms, food, drink and cultural customs.

And hand in hand with this cosy set-up are the universally accepted codes of conduct that have been written in invisible ink on each and every hostel wall;

Label or lose your food.

Be social, or be shunned.

If you come back in at 4am; don’t wake us up, and don’t throw up.

Keep stealth sex quiet, and snoring quieter.

And, of course, offer any leftover food to the hostel staff.

Stick to these rules, and you’ll avoid making any enemies. In contrast, you’re likely to form those oddly instantaneous short-term friendships that occur within the hostel common room. Idle chit-chat about places been & to-be-seen, food eaten, and great nights drunken echoes from every corner of the room, as stories, Facebook pages and tomorrow’s sightseeing schedules are exchanged. However, the quiet is soon disrupted by the teaching and sharing of each nation’s favourite drinking game before the pub crawl swings by for its latest victims. And fast forward to the next morning [as most of the pub crawlers’ memories do], the hostel staff go about their work in cleaning each dorm room and reluctantly waking up those guests who have missed their check-out time, and often their booked flight. I have performed this duty, and it also works a treat as a practical joke. So unprofessional…

But this is what a hostel offers, and a hotel doesn’t. The youthful vibrance, verve and vigour of a hostel far outscore the luxuries of high-rise hotels with their inflated prices and Mickey Mouse Michelin stars. Okay, so you wouldn’t bring your family or dear Grandmother for a hostel stay in the backstreets of Sarajevo [though exceptions have been made], but for those wanting to add that edgy, international feel to a stopover a hostel is your best bet.

Oh and just remember to leave leftover food to the staff. Or did I already mention that?

Dan Bowen.