Bare Minimum

On Sunday I finally moved into the youth hostel I should have booked earlier. It was classic youth hostel, with bunk beds, shared rooms and facilities, kitchen, chill-out area and internet service, and the usual crowd of early twentysomethings backpacking through Europe. I am not a fan of hostels, mainly because I don’t like sleeping with several other random strangers. It’s not that I am prissy like that, I just feel like some people weren’t raised right and have no matters and other folks are just weird and I don’t feel like sleeping in the same room as them. Furthermore, it’s pure capitalism. They charge you the most money for the least possible. It’s like they ask themselves, how little can we give people while still follow the health and building codes (the only stopping them from giving you a mat on the floor in a tiny box and calling it a night, as I saw later on my trip) and then how much can we charge them so that it’s barely preferable to sleeping on a park bench. Shit, you pay 16€ and some places won’t even give you sheets. Don’t dream of a towel. Still, it’s the best way to meet people, and it’s at Los Amigos Backpackers’ Hostel in Madrid that I met Tracey over breakfast and convinced her to follow me to Morocco over lunch. Although I think it was the sharp cut that sealed the deal.