Hostel Life - Part 1 - The types of people you meet in hostels.

Hi everyone, As life has been going back to normal in recent months, travel also became a possibility again, albeit with a stiff amount of research before booking, due to the ever shifting Covid regulations. 

After being locked up in Dublin for a year and a half, I finally took the bus to the airport again in September and I was as excited as a child on Christmas morning.

Since then, I’ve traveled to Berlin (September), Copenhagen (November), London (December), Holland and Lisbon (December/January), Barcelona (February) and Edinburgh (last week).

So with a return to travel also comes a return to hostel life. As a veteran backpacker, I have noticed that, no matter where you go to, be it London or Malaga or Sydney, you encounter the same types of people pretty much everywhere. 

As a guide to those of you who are new to the backpacking game, and as a déjà vu for those who have earned their stripes over the years, I present to you: 

A Guide to the Types of People you will encounter when staying in hostels around the world. 

First up: 

The Box Tickers

Who are they?

The Box Tickers are a special breed. They typically operate in groups of 3 or 4, but Solo Tickers have been reported.

They’re in town for only a few days, but they have the intention of visiting every cathedral, museum, tower, stadium and graveyard in the city, plus any other sight worth seeing according to their guidebooks. They get up early and operate with military precision. Walk into the lounge room at 8AM and they have already taken control of the main table. Two of them are flittering through guidebooks, shouting out sites of interest to the group leader, who writes them down or types them into an iPad. Meanwhile, the 4th member of the group is hunched over a large subway map and working out the most efficient routes between the sites. 

Their itinerary will read something like:

Eiffel Tower

Notre Dame

Sacré Coeur

The Louvre

Arc de Triomphe

Ile de la Cité

Pére La Chaisse

And that’s the morning. They will then have a quick lunch (preferably something they can eat on the go) and start the afternoon program. They’re usually out the door by 8.30 or 9AM. 

After a hard day’s work they’ll plan their return to the hostel to coincide with the serving time of the hostel dinner, eat it and retire to their room so they can rest and prepare for the next day. 

Chances of meeting them.

Slim. If you happen to be up early, you might witness one of their strategy sessions, but otherwise you probably won’t see them. 

Fun to party with? 

No. They’re busy. 

The Online People

Who are they?

You’ve seen them hanging around the lounge room. They always have their laptop in their lap, or a phone or iPad in their hands. Their faces are buried in the screens, and they are on endless Skype or Facetime calls with their parents, friends and others back home. When not talking to people back home, they’re sending WhatsApp messages or watching Netflix.

One wonders why they went through the hassle of flying halfway across the continent (or even the world) to sit on a battered couch 16 hours a day, talking to their mum. The furthest they’ll get from the hostel is when they walk to the supermarket across the street, where they’ll get something that’s easy to cook in the hostel kitchen and then can be eaten while Skyping with their uncle. 

Chances of meeting them.

Nearly certain, they never leave! 

Fun to party with? 

Hard to tell. Maybe pry that iPad out of their hands and see what happens. They’ll probably either get violent or start to cry.

Next up, we have:

The people who never leave the hostel

Who are they?

This group differs from The Online People in that they actually interact with the other guests. There are basically 2 types of people who never leave the hostel-

Those who are (nearly) broke and simply cannot afford to go out eating or drinking or visiting sites, but we’ll talk about them in a later category.

And then there are the people who simply like hanging out in the cosy atmosphere of the hostel. They’ll talk to you, have beers, help staff in the kitchen, take an afternoon nap on the couch or in the garden. 

The best example of this type of hostel dwellers is a guy I met at the Hostel Cat in Las Vegas a few years ago. 

I never learned his name, but I christened him Bud because he always had a tall boy of Bud Ice beer in his hand. The hostel consisted of 20 wooden beach huts, each containing 4 or 5 bunk beds, set up in a horseshoe shape around a large courtyard. The open end of the horseshoe was closed off by the main building that contained reception, the kitchen, the laundry room etc. 

The courtyard was a large open space littered with picknick tables, old lawn Chairs and a big grill that you could use for a barbecue. 

Bud looked like a surfer dude- Kurt Cobain length curly hair, a permanent tan and always dressed in clothes from Billabong or O’Neill. He was always there and functioned as the defacto ring leader of whoever happened to be there, whether they liked it or not. He was a fun guy to talk to and always had a joke ready.

One morning at around 5AM, with the sun just coming up, I got back from a night at a casino, slightly worse for wear, and decided to have one last beer in the courtyard before retiring to my beach hut, and found Bud there, standing on an upturned oil drum, recounting tales of surfing trips to Hawaii and other exotic locales, using his trademark can of Bud Ice as a magic wand to indicate the height of the waves and the direction of the surf. His audience consisted of 2 young Korean boys, one of them slumped over a picknick table in a drunken stupor, and a Canadian guy whose brain seemed to be floating somewhere near Pluto. 

I joined the show and when he finally finished, we had another beer and I called it a night. I only saw Bud leave the hostel once, when he walked to the 7/11 across the street to get a new box of Bud Ice. One day I came back to the hostel mid afternoon to drop off some souvenirs I had bought and found no Bud in the courtyard. After checking at reception, I was told that Bud had checked out and had left for the airport. I never learned his name, but he was the best example of this type of hostel dweller I have come across.

Chances of meeting them.

Close to 100%, unless you’re a Box Ticker. 

Fun to party with? 

If you run into someone like Bud, absolutely.  

The Budget People

Who are they?

The budget people basically split apart in 2 categories: the Low Budget People and the No Budget People.

The NBPs then fall apart again in 2 categories: Those who actually had money at the start of their trip but burned through it a bit too enthusiastically, and those who knew they only had budget for their flight and accommodation, but went anyway, knowing that they would be living on 5 Dollars a day. These people are just plain stupid and should have stayed at home.

We’ve all been part of group 1 at some point. I was in New York for St. Patrick’s Day once and had so much fun that, with a full day to go to my return flight, I had 23 Dollar in my pocket, which is not an ample budget in any big city, least of all New York, but these things happen. 

Fortunately, the weather was miserable, so I walked to the deli across the street, bought a 12 pack of PBR for $10 and a few cheap hotdogs and settled in the lounge room for the day, watching movies and drinking cheap beer. As luck would have it (and luck is often with the drunk) when I cracked open my 8th beer and started to wonder if my stash would last for the day, a group of 4 girls walked in with 2 bottles of Malibu coconut liquor and a large can of pineapple juice. They had 2 glasses each, and then one of them came over to me, explained that they were going out for dinner and that they had an early flight the next day so they weren’t going to drink the rest. Would I like to have their leftovers? Ofcourse. So now I had a nearly full bottle of Malibu and about a pint of pineapple juice. 

My luck hadn’t run out yet because, just as I was about to run out of Malibu, a group of Danish guys came in, carrying a box of Carlsberg beer. They had one each and, again, they said they had an early flight so would I like the remaining 4 cans? 

Ofcourse. 

So, yes, it is possible to get drunk for 12 Dollars in New York. You just need a bit of luck. 

And then there are the Low Budget People

These people know in advance that they have a limited budget but they set themselves a daily spending limit and actually stick to it. They will often visit free museums, or ones with a low entry fee, parks and monuments that you can see from the street, and take the free walking tour. They have all their meals at the hostel and only occasionally they’ll award themselves a special treat, like a cold beer on a sunny café terrace or a double scoop of gelato. They’re down to earth people who know that they won’t be having lunch at the Oyster Bar in Grand Central Station, or dinner at Luger’s steakhouse, but still have an enjoyable trip. They know their budget and base their itinerary around it. 

Chances of meeting them.

Very good. They are always in the hostel at the busy meal times, so if you’re there yourself, you’ll run in to them. 

Fun to party with? 

They’ll have a beer or 2 at the end of the day in the lounge room, but this is not the type that will walk to the liquor store across the street and come back with a bottle of José Cuervo and starts pouring shots for everyone. They’re generally nice people who have seen a lot of the city without breaking the bank and if you buy them a round or two they always have something interesting to say.

Much less fun than all the other groups mentioned before is:  

Acoustic guitar guy

Who are they?

There is no they. Acoustic Guitar Guy has no friends. He is alone. 

Acoustic Guitar Guy comes in 2 different forms:

- A white guy with dreadlocks, dressed in an Aloha shirt and leather sandals, who has had a “life changing experience” while he was in Equador or Fiji or wherever and now has seen the light and wants to escape the corporate hell that is our world.

- A skinny white guy with short hair,  a receding hairline and an attempt at a goatee. 

Acoustic Guitar Guy will walk into the lounge room and sit down. He will start playing easy to remember 90s singalong songs like What’s Going On? or Wonderwall, to the horror of all assembled.

In an ideal situation, hostel staff will notice him on arrival and turn up the stereo to such a level that his shitty guitar won’t be audible anymore.

People will often debark to the kitchen or the garden or any part of the hostel where they can’t see or hear Acoustic Guitar Guy. 

Fortunately, hostel staff hate Acoustic Guitar Guy as much as the guests do so, as mentioned earlier, when they see him approaching, they’ll often turn up the music to such a volume that even Acoustic Guitar Guy will comprehend that playing is pointless.

If staff are not paying attention, another strategy that will often work is to turn your phone up to 11 and play music from an especially noisy band like Napalm Death or Cannibal Corpse, so that Acoustic Guitar Guy is so shocked by the hostile music that he will clear off. 

Chances of meeting them.

Disappointingly, still not zero.

Fun to party with?

Avoid at all costs.  

Much more fun to be around than Acoustic Guitar Guy is: 

The Drunk

Who are they?

You’ve seen The Drunk. You go down to the lounge room at 10AM to see if there’s any breakfast going and he (it’s always a he) is already on the couch with a plate of waffles and just about to crack open his second can of beer. He is telling some story about how, on a trip to Croatia, he drank half a bottle of hazelnut raki at lunchtime and then woke up on the beach at around 7 in the evening. The Drunk spends a fair bit of time in the hostel but most of his time goes to exploring the city in search of new places to drink. He will make time for local sites of interest inbetween drinking, especially if they happen to be located conveniently near his route from one bar to the next.

His itinerary is built around a list of local bars, breweries and distilleries and he has a knack for finding drinking holes that no one knew existed. 

He will often stumble back into to the hostel at the end of the afternoon, holding a half empty bottle of wine that he got at the local food market, to recharge himself and his phone. After an hour or so, he will depart again for the evening session and will not be seen again until some point after midnight, when he will sit down on the couch, polish off another 3 or 4 or 7 beers and then go to bed. 

Chances of meeting them.

Pretty good actually. He spends a lot of time exploring the city but is often around at the busier times of the day like breakfast or dinner time. 

Fun to party with?

The Drunk is always ready for the next drink and always has a story to tell, so in general he’s good fun to hang out with.

Just make sure you have a good excuse ready so you can leave when you get bored of his never ending stories of how he passed out in an unmarked heavy metal bar above a Chinese restaurant in Bratislava or the time he went for a beer in Las Vegas and woke up on the floor of a subway train in Philadelphia. 

Closely related to The Drunk are.. 

The Australians

Who are they?

The Australians are related to The Drunk in hostel behavior, but have a more pressing schedule. They typically travel in groups of 6 or 7 and take all their holidays for the year in one go, so that they have 4 or 5 weeks to explore a dozen or so countries in Europe or a good chunk of the USA or Japan. 

This means that they only have a few days to see the main tourist sites before they move on from Amsterdam to Paris to Barcelona etc. 

The main Achilles heel for the Aussies is that they also like a drink, so they will often visit their first site of the day and then one of them will notice a bar showing rugby and they’ll go in “for one” and end up spending the rest of the day there, gulping down pints and forgetting all about the Sagrada Familia or the Vatican. 

When pressed on the matter of missing half their planned itinerary they wave it off with a casual “all churches look the fuckin’ same anway”. 

Chances of meeting them.

High! My lawyer isn’t 100% on this but it seems that there is an international law stating that, in order to keep their license, a hostel must have at least 2 Australian residents at any time. 

Fun to party with? 

Absolutely! They’re often on a massive jet lag after their 20+ hour trip from Down Under so they have no clue what time or day it is and, to combat this condition, they just keep drinking. 

Just make sure to keep them away from a condition that is known as the Aussie Nostalgia. This happens when someone pulls out a bottle of Bundaberg rum and they start singing songs from those bands that are mega ultra super world famous in Australia but that nobody outside of the country has ever heard of, like Cold Chisel or Powderfinger. 

The Wooo girls

Who are they?

The Wooo Girls, a term coined by the legendary Barney Stinson on the cult sitcom How I Met Your Mother, are a strange breed that exists on the fringes of hostel life. 

They operate in packs of 6 or 7 and typically isolate themselves from regular hostel activity.

You will not see them all day. Then, at around 9 PM, they will appear in the lounge room in their pijamas and have some breakfast, a bowl of cereal or something else that is easy to digest. 

After 20 minutes or so they will head back to their room to get ready for the night ahead. 

They’ll emerge again an hour and a half later, in full presentation mode- fake eyelashes, high heels, mini skirts, tiny purses and enough makeup on their faces to kill all the fish in the Mediterranean. 

Often, they’ll tag along with the hostel pub crawl (an inevitably dull affair that takes in half a dozen bars that are on the list for the sole reason that they offer all participants a free shot of watered down tequila upon arrival) for the first 2 stops and then split off to the cheapest nightclub in town. Once there, they’ll order one round of whatever is the cheapest drink available and, for the rest of the night, leech off gullable and horny guys who think they have a chance of getting in their pants if they buy them enough drinks. When the individual group members sense that they have run their course, they’ll regroup and move to the next club where they’ll perform the same ritual. This continues on through the night until, somewhere around dawn, they’ll manage to get a taxi driver to drive them home for free because they're drunk and pretty.

They’ll stumble back into the hostel at 6AM, alcopop in hand and mascara smeared across their face, and sit down in the lounge room, drunk and giggling. When they start to pass out from the free shots of tequila or Jägerbomb they’ve been throwing down all night, the hostel staff will start to urge them back to their room where they’ll pass out and soak in their own, agave induced coma until the next night. 

Repeat. 

Chances of meeting them.

Not great, but this is not a bad thing. 

Fun to party with? 

Unless you’re a guy in your late teens or early twenties who is convinced you can Jägerbomb them into having sex with you, no. 

So, there you go. These are the most common types of people you will meet while backpacking your way around the world. It’s been a tough year and a half for travelling, but the world is open again so strap on your backpack, grab a beer and hit the road. 

Cheers

Lennard