By Alessia Diez
Most study abroad students’ weekend travels bank on two things: budget airline tickets and cheap hostels. But with the COVID-19 pandemic, the latter lost its appeal: cramped quarters and close contact with strangers were the antitheses of COVID-19 safe guidelines.
Now—in a half-pandemic, half-endemic world—hostels are making their comeback. My last few trips are a testament to this: it feels like every other week I’m scrambling to reserve the last remaining bunk of a mixed-gender dorm room.
So far this semester, London has offered the slimmest of pickings. Most of the decent hostels were fully booked, and the ones that remained were riddled with complaints about uncleanliness, sketchy roommates and shoddy facilities. But if there’s one thing you learn while traveling abroad, it’s how to lower your standards.
The night before my friend Chloe and I departed, we settled on St. Christopher’s Hostel in Camden Town. It’d cost us each $28 per night for a 9 person, mixed-gender dorm room with a shared bathroom.
One reviewer claimed it was “really just rooms above a pub” and the only reason worth staying there was “if you have no money or are in hiding.” We were sold.
Our budget airline of choice landed us in London on a Thursday night. The hostel was smack on Camden Street, a stretch lined with colorful, graffitied buildings. A sign at the entrance read “Reception is in the pub.”
Said pub was clunkily tucked beneath the hostel, its windows were painted a sky blue, and its signage read “Belushi’s.”
When we walked in we were greeted by a young twenty-something-year-old who spotted our luggage and pointed us over to the small wooden podium jutting out the side of the bar. An inebriated couple in the corner finished the last sips of their beer and mustered a half-wave to the bartender on their way out.
Another twenty-something-year-old was manning the podium, a smirk at the ready when he saw us — two girls who, he probably thought, have no idea what they’d signed themselves up for.
The check-in was pretty standard to other budget hostels: we didn’t have to show IDs to confirm our identity, we rented a couple of towels for six bucks, and we were given discount cards for drinks at Belushi’s.
A door at the back of the pub led us to the hostel. We shuffled down the stairs to the lounge, fries we picked up at a Kebab place across the street in one hand and luggage heavy in the other.
We swung open the blue-paned door and found six middle-aged men planted on the leather sofa and some bar stools. Empty pizza boxes and beer bottles littered the floor, and a soccer game played on the TV in the corner of the room. We backstepped and filed up the staircase to our room.
“I thought we booked a youth hostel,” said Chloe, only half-joking. We were starting to fear there may have been a good reason for the twenty-something-year-old’s smirk.
Our room had three triple bunk beds, their frames a cold, grey metal lined with a shabby red curtain for privacy. The one window in the room was ajar and music from the nearby pubs crept in through it.
I was assigned bed #8, a middle bunk. In the bunk below mine, a man’s feet peeked out, his painted toes twitching every few seconds. He was, quite clearly, a snorer.
We climbed into Chloe’s top bunk and finished our fries. Some minutes later a lanky French woman arrived, annoyance visible on her face. She hummed as she rolled her luggage to the foot of my bunk and took out some flip flops for her shower. She never glanced our way. Once she retreated into the bathroom, we called it a night.
The next morning we met the snorer. When I slid open my bed curtain and shimmied out of my bunk, he was hunched over his luggage, fiddling with the zipper. About ten different hair products were fanned out on his bed.
When he looked up at me, he shot me a toothless smile. His bleach blonde mow-hawk was gelled in an updo, and his right hand was firm on a blow dryer. He must’ve been in his mid-forties.
“Do you mind if I go and use the bathroom right now?” the mow-hawked snorer asked, his British accent more pronounced with each word. “No, go for it,” I replied. “Thanks. I heard you coughing last night. Some hot tea would do you good,” he added as he walked over to the bathroom.
Later that night we met another roommate: Bradley, a fairly short and pale 25-year old from Northern England. We had just gotten back from a long day of tourist activities and were hoping to fit in a short nap before dinner. Bradley had other plans for us.
Leaning against his bunk with his arms crossed, he asked us where we were from and what we were doing in London. As I answered him, Chloe sneezed. His eyes shifted to her.
“Woah that’s not COVID right?” he said in a thick Northern English accent, both his arms angled ninety degrees. We assured him we tested negative before flying.
“Aye I’m just kidding. I don’t believe in all that stuff anyway. That vaccine is wonky,” he laughed. We then made it known to him that we were triple vaccinated; his brows furrowed with suspicion when we said we hadn’t suffered any negative side effects from the vaccine.
“Aye you Americans sure are a funny lot,” he retorted before changing the subject.
COVID-19 has changed a lot, but it hasn’t changed the natural sociability and weirdness you can really only find in a hostel. Throwing strangers into a room and stacking them on top of each other in bunk beds is an experience that, naturally, evokes laughter, familiarizes you with new types of people, and broadens your idea of what travel is really about.
It makes sense that beds are filled up and hostels are busy again. My tip: start booking now. And don’t be surprised if you see the mow-hawked snorer, the lanky French woman, or Bradley along the way.