The Infamous Hostel Incident

I've seen a lot of hostels in multiple countries in my travels. They're usually all the same - room full of bunk beds, communal bathrooms, and usually no real place to store your luggage. You meet nice people traveling on a budget, you can't beat the cheap price, and you can find them in every country.

While hostels are not for everyone, especially anyone who could be categorized as high maintenance, they are fantastic for someone on a budget. Not to mention there are some pretty cool hostels to stay in - like an old Monastery turned into youth hostel. Besides, you really just need a bed and a place to sleep as you spend the bulk of your time sightseeing.

That being said, after 3 separate trips to Europe I'd never had a bad experience. Maybe I was just lucky. In the end the inevitable had to happen and I had an unforgettable, non-ideal experience.

This particular trip had started out rough to begin with. We'd missed our flight overseas, the first day finally in Ireland we got in a car accident, and this was the first night of an already disastrous trip. We checked into out hostel and crashed for the night - the usual routine after a very long day. It took some convincing to assure the third member of our group that hostels were safe and we'd never had an incident.

That was probably a stupid comment to make, even though it was true.

About 4am we woke up to a room full of screaming. Talk about a rude awakening. Someone turned the lights on and we watched horrified as a very drunk guy urinated on a girl sleeping in the bunk across from me.

To say we were stunned is an understatement. What do you do now?

Things got a little chaotic, and there was a lot of running in and out of different people into our room. Essentially, this intoxicated man tried to run away from the hostel but was cornered in the parking lot by the police and arrested (after he had crashed his car into a parked car). The poor hostel worker on duty did everything he could to make amends and calm everyone.

In the midst of this abrupt awakening the three of us quickly conferred. It was unanimous that no one would be going back to sleep. We grabbed our stuff, hit the showers and checked out around 6am ready to move on to our next destination.

What else would you do in that situation?

While it was not the ideal beginning to a two week European trip, the upside was that at 6am on a Sunday morning in Ireland there aren't many people awake. Having the little town to ourselves for a while and watching the sun come up was fantastic and a much needed positive note to such a rocky beginning.

The moral I took away from this little escapade is this: Always sleep on the top bunk in a hostel.