The Hostel Hitch
I stood in front of my hostel in Prague after a long day of uncomfortable bus rides. This was stop number two on my solo trip through Europe, and I was still disoriented by the backpacking way of life. My feet ached in my Converses, their paper-thin soles worn from long walks through cobbled streets. I may as well have been barefoot.
The long stone building stood covered in a thin layer of moss on a dark street corner. The glowing front desk light and the muffled tune of Bohemian Rhapsody invited me inside. I was eager to settle into a cozy bed after the long trip from Berlin.
My friendliness was wasted on the desk attendant, who grumbled an insincere greeting and kept his eyes down. I took my room key and trudged to my sleeping quarters.
The metal door screeched as it opened, and I heard the sound echo throughout the bunks. To my surprise, this was not a typical hostel room of five-to-ten beds. This was a bunk room that slept 36. I stood in astonishment for a moment, then sighed away my disappointment and searched for an empty bed.
As I cruised the hall, eyes peered out from behind sheer curtains, and loud hacks came from every which corner. I felt as though I were walking through a tuberculosis ward.
I questioned my decision to stay in Europe while the rest of my study abroad friends headed back to America, 5,841 miles away. My closest friends were celebrating graduation in Tucson at my favorite bars on University Boulevard. Meanwhile, I sat alone in a dank hostel, surrounded by odious strangers.
I brushed aside my homesickness and attempted to slap some sense into myself. I had dreamed of solo traveling through Europe for the past decade, and now I was actually doing it. How could I allow myself to be so pitifully pessimistic?
I laid my tired body in a lower bunk. Behind the curtains of the bed across from mine, a shadowy face stared at me. A hand brushed the partition aside, revealing an older man with crooked teeth and a startling unibrow.
“Have you been to France?” he asked in a heavy accent. “Paris?”
I said no.
“Miss America, I have a place for you to stay!” he said. Was it that obvious that I was American? “Look, you stay here with me, and I will show you all of Paris.”
He presented a photo of a gray apartment with crumbly brick walls and a sterile set of black furniture. It looked like the inside of a nut house.
Coughs and sneezes echoed around me, and the man’s foul breath stung my nostrils. Just like that, I had had enough.
As I gathered my things, the man’s unibrow furrowed into a V-shape of confusion. Yes, I would stay in Europe, and musty hostels be damned, I would enjoy myself! But I would not begin my travels with a creepy Frenchman in that God-forsaken hostel. I smiled goodbye, returned my key to the front desk and booked a one-room Airbnb.
