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Travel The Hostelling Thread

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crazyman27

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I'm sure many BF users have stayed in hostels around the world. What has been your best/worst hostel experience? Any hostels you would recommend?

My worst experience came recently in Amsterdam. Stayed in a large hostel on a friday night in december in Amsterdam. I was travelling alone and it was my third night after flying in so I was still jet-lagged. Hence I hit the hay pretty early but was woken up by a crazy Dutch (I think) guy around midnight. He was talking to himself loudly and would alternate between sitting, lying in bed and pacing around the room. Every now and then he would yell something and he was also eating out of a big jar of nutella. It didn't help that my bed was above his so I was in the perfect location to hear his mutterings.

This didn't exactly make for good sleeping conditions and I only got to sleep around 4.30am when the nutjob fell asleep.

Touch wood I don't have a worse experience.

I also hate it when fat smelly guys sleep in your room and the smell stays on your clothes for days afterwards.
 
For me Hostels have to be clean... as long as they are clean, I don't care. Ive had a couple of great ones, a couple of decent ones, and a couple of crap ones.

One of the funniest moments was in Prague when someone was watching scrubs on his laptop for the first time, and had headphones in. It was only around 11:30pm and he was pissing himself laughing (as you do if you are only watching scrubs for the first time) and someone else in the room went crazy and starting yelling at him to be quiet as he had to be up at 7am for work or something. The police then got involved and pretty much told the guy to HTFU and if he needed sleep, he should organise a single hostel room.
 
My first ever night in a hostel was in Berlin, and I was woken up around 2 or 3am to two people ****ing in the bunk opposite me. Then afterwards they stayed up talking in Dutch for like an hour with no volume control, slept until maybe 8, and then they were up again talking Dutch with some other Dutch girl who was a flipping foghorn.

I just found it funny that that was my first ever night in a hostel overseas. Hasn't happened since then.

Only other experience I can think of is getting cockblocked by a bald guy who resembled Hitman.
 

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Travel Joy Hostel in London and Grandio Party Hostel in Budapest should never be stayed at by anyone. Both filthy as all ****.

There are some great hostels in Europe....but there's some shit ones as well.

Best i've stayed at are Hanoi Backpackers in Vietnam, Greg and Tom in Krakow, Circus in Berlin and Wombats in Vienna.
 
I've only ever staid in shared rooms a couple of times. The worst stories usually involve getting all their stuff knicked so getting woken up is nothing.
 
Had a nightmare of a stay at a hostel in amsterdam. The only spots available were in a 20 person dorm and it was full of american college kids who thought they were great because they could smoke a bit of weed.

One night they got home at 3am and talked loudly and they all loved saying 'awesome' which gets on your nerves rather quickly. Luckily it was our last night there as my mrs wasn't best pleased in the morning.

After that we only stayed in private rooms.

Plenty of good hostels in germany, austria and spain
 
Actually, my best experience was at a hostel in Harlem. A mate and I stayed there a couple of years ago. It was quiet, clean, the staff were great and we met a lot of great people from around the world. It was also close to a subway station. We had only intended to stay one or two nights but we ended up staying two weeks. We were a bit nervous before we stayed there thinking it might be a bit of a dangerous neighbourhood but we felt totally safe, even walking back at 3 or 4 in the morning.
 
Best hostels I've stayed at were Balmers in Interlaken and Bauhaus in Bruges. Both had great bars/restaurants and good accomodation. Probably helped that they were two of my favourite locations in Europe too.

Worst was a hostel I stayed at in Prague, actually it wasn't even a proper hostel but more an old school converted into a hostel. All the proper hostels in the city centre were booked out and this was the only place we could get cheap accomodation. It was miles out of town though and apart from providing rooms with beds there were pretty much no facilities at all and no shops or bars around the area either. Outside the picturesque city centre Prague resembles communist Russia with lots of ugly grey apartment buildings and not much else.

Getting to and from the city centre was a nightmare too, having to either catch a combination of buses and trains or getting cabs who were no doubt ripping us off blind. Still had a great time there though, some great bars and clubs there with mega cheap drinks and hot local chicks.
 
I remember spending a hilarious week in a backpackers in Shanghai- I was on my own, a student with not much quid, and had a week to kill until my flight, so I just stayed put in a 4 bunk room in a hostel in the french quarter. 2 AUD a day FTW.

In 6 days I had the following roommates coming and going-

Transient worker type from Harbin
Cons: snored, hawked phlegm, farted, grunted, swore heavily in chinese in his sleep and thrashed around in the top bunk, smoked in bed, borrowed my shower thongs without asking.
Pros: offered me a shot from his budget bottle of chinese whisky whilst we were watching TV in the common room.

British couple from the 'borough trekking around the world.
Pros: Talked cricket wiv me. 'ad a bruvver in Perf n'all. Chick was hot in a chavvy sort of way.
Cons: British.

Gorgeous Korean girl on study exchange
Cons: Spoke no english. I spoke no korean. Surprisingly loud kimchi flavoured farts in the upstairs bunk.
Pros: We communicated in soulful glances and our equally shitty chinese

Rick from Melbourne, just passing through.
Pros: Nice enough bloke, pissed out of his gourd the entire week, still on my msn.
Cons: Brought a different girl back every night and had noisy cross-bunk sex. And I think he got on board with the korean girl before I did. The bastard.

Viet bloke in his 50s
Pros: None that occur to me.
Cons: Brought a prostitute back to the room and argued about the price loudly. (On a separate occasion) walked in on me squat-toileting.

Rasta chick from 'Aiti
Pros: Hilarious accent. Cooked up some funky caribbean stew of some kind. Beat the everloving shit out of me at winning 11 to the point where I didn't want to play her anymore.
Cons: Came back unexpectedly one day and walked in on her in her underwear (positive) going through my suitcase. (double negative).

I would say I learnt more about the rich variety of human experience in that one week than in my previous 23 years on the planet. Good times, explosive diarrhea.
 

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i think the worst experience i had was some dude that would come into the room late at night and switch on the light regardless if anyone was sleeping or not and start rummaging through his stuff. a couple of times people would sort of yell from their bed "turn out the light!" but i don't think it bothered him. just trying to think what hostel it was, but i forget. can't even remember what country it was.

i guess you kind of expect little annoyances like people coming in and out of the room whilst you're trying to sleep, snoring etc etc... but it's part and parcel of staying in a dorm room with others and i don't mind so much. generally, most people when they come into a room talking and discover people are sleeping will generally quieten it down to a whisper or leave the room which is nice and respectful. so i can't complain at all.

i posted a nice story of my time in a hostel in berlin in the epic fail thread. not sure if i should paste here, but that was a fairly awkward time trying to get in and out of the room whilst trying not to disturb everyone.

best hostel i stayed in was in tallinn, estonia. a lovely done up thing that wouldnt look out of place in the 1920 or 30's. unfortunately their computer and internet speed was from the same era. :p
 
i think the worst experience i had was some dude that would come into the room late at night and switch on the light regardless if anyone was sleeping or not and start rummaging through his stuff. a couple of times people would sort of yell from their bed "turn out the light!" but i don't think it bothered him. just trying to think what hostel it was, but i forget. can't even remember what country it was.

i guess you kind of expect little annoyances like people coming in and out of the room whilst you're trying to sleep, snoring etc etc... but it's part and parcel of staying in a dorm room with others and i don't mind so much. generally, most people when they come into a room talking and discover people are sleeping will generally quieten it down to a whisper or leave the room which is nice and respectful. so i can't complain at all.

Some people just don't understand basic etiquette. When I was in Prague on new years day at around 8 am (so everyone was hungover or still drunk) some Indian bloke started rummaging through his stuff incredibly loudly for around 30 minutes. To make matters worse, he left the door of the dorm wide open meaning the next door rumpus rooms' TV roared very loudly.

He was a nice a guy to talk to. But he had absolutely no ****ing idea that he was being a complete and utter ass to the rest of us. From my top bunk I reached over and slammed the door as loudly as possible, and looked at him straight in the eye. After that, he was a lot quieter.

Don't even get me started on bad snorers. If you snore in my dorm I will wake you up, no questions asked. If you keep doing it I won't just wake you up, I'll also be planning revenge. If you know you snore and you still sleep in a large dormitory you deserve what's coming to you.
 
Was staying in an 8 bed dorm in a hostel in Edinburgh and some selfish bastard got reception to give him a wake up call for 6am, not only did he get woken up at 6am so did the f***ing rest of us.

Fair enough getting a wake up call when you're staying in a single room in a hotel but not when you're sharing a room in a hostel.
 

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Was staying in an 8 bed dorm in a hostel in Edinburgh and some selfish bastard got reception to give him a wake up call for 6am, not only did he get woken up at 6am so did the f***ing rest of us.

Fair enough getting a wake up call when you're staying in a single room in a hotel but not when you're sharing a room in a hostel.

The dorm had a phone? Or they called his mobile?
 
The dorm had a phone? Or they called his mobile?

Nah some guy that worked there just came into our room and yelled "hey <insert selfish bastard's name> this is your 6am wake up call" which was met by groans and swearing from the rest of us.
 

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