The Dreaded Dormitory

I wish this throwback travel tale was filled with harrowing escapes coupled with a finale of explosions, but instead it is sprinkled with mishaps and general annoyances that lead to an overwhelming first experience in a 10-person hostel dorm for a new world-traveller (yours, truly). 

It was your average travel day- everything felt like it was going wrong. I was a grumpy wreck. PMS was beginning to settle into every inch of my body and my attitude was one bad comment away from reaching Hulk-like proportions of hormonal overreacting. After a flight from London and then a bus ride from the airport, I had a large Osprey red backpack strapped to my back and a yellow daypack attached to my chest. I looked and felt like a pregnant ninja turtle. I was standing in the middle of an empty street around 11pm in Split, Croatia with my then boyfriend, Adam (now fiancé!). He had the same pregnant turtle backpack set-up and we tried to both stare at the Google Maps screen on his phone and avoid running into each other as we figured out where our hostel was located. 

I was secretly terrified and not so secretly off my game. I had traveled before, but in very controlled environments in the US, Mexico, Canada and France. I handled the shit out of that. But here I was, in a country that I wasn’t familiar with and I was not handling this. I was fixated on the fact that we would have to sleep in a 10-bunk dorm for the first time and have to enter said dorm in the dark of the night. I decided to distract myself by half-heartedly staring at the map and into the distance a couple of times but quickly realized that I would do more good standing far away from the screen while Adam worked his Google map/Hostel World directions-reading magic. 

The magic worked and he led the way from the bus station, past a closed street market, down a stone pathway, through a long row of parked cars, over a broken cement path and right up to an apartment building — that in the dismal dark of night — looked like it was a transplant from Chernobyl. 

As we stopped, I stood and asked, “Oh, cool! Is this it?!” But what I was thinking went more like, “Where the hell are we? Is this how we die? Yup, this is how we die. Robbery or slowly killed from radiation poison. Take your pick, Amanda!”

Adam also had his doubts. There were no signs and no indications that a hostel resided in this uninspiring concrete block. No signs, no nothing. Just graffiti and darkness.

So we looked around, looked at the door, looked back at the map, looked into the sky (mostly me), until, like a gift from the universe, a couple walked past us and began to climb up the stairs of the apartment building and opened its front door.

We knew we had to act fast so that we didn’t have to worry about accidentally ringing the wrong doorbells to get into the building (Adam was thinking of ringing all of them until someone answered, apparently an effective and terribly disruptive Delivery-person trick). Adam bounded ahead of me with his long legs, and reached the door just as it was closing behind the couple. The girl quickly turned her head full of blonde hair as the ripples of her frightened status went through her swollen body. Her not so equally pudgy counterpart and boy toy was also a bit frazzled but clearly very drunk. As we all stood there in the dark for a brief moment, the blonde snappily asked, “What are you looking for?” 

Adam replied, “The Backpackers Fairytale Hostel. Google said it was around here somewhere.”

She replied that we were in the correct location but she was still noticeably sketched-out by our presence and suspiciously stared at us a little too long. Then she began walking up the apartment building’s steps and we followed. Any attempts we made at communication were met with an awkward answer or silence from her and drunken breathing from her friend. It could have been from her general suspicion of us, horrible personality or the fact that she was out of breath from the amount of stairs that we had to climb. I suspect it was a combination of the three.

Eventually our footsteps became the background music of the moment as Adam’s attempts at polite conversation failed, and we made it to the front door of the hostel. Blondie turned to us once more before opening the door, as if to check to see if we looked any more suspicious after climbing seven flights of stairs. We passed her last security checkpoint, and she opened the door and graciously allowed us into the hostel. 

I immediately went into the exact opposite direction so that I could quickly exit that awkward situation and Adam went the other way which was right behind Blondie, to try and find some Hostel Staff. I sent him a silent “good luck” and continued around the corner into the small kitchen of the hostel. It was a tiny room with only a meter of counter space, a stove, refrigerator, and small wooden table in the back corner. I immediately realized that this was a much more laid back barebones hostel than I experienced in the big cities of France. But I was still intrigued. I came back around the corner and Adam met me in the hallway. He seemed a little worked up but he was on a mission to figure out where we were supposed to go next. He hadn’t found any staff members. 

We looked around for the host of the hostel but no one was around. We looked at the closed door next to the kitchen and it was the hostel office closed for the night. A handwritten note with keys to our room and lockers were taped to the door instructing us that our room was “Room number 8.” We examined the keys and noticed that one set was labeled “4” and the other was labeled “6”. Simple enough, or so we thought. 

Now for the part that I dreaded most – walking into a dark, 10-person dorm room filled with creaky metal bunk beds and somehow settling in and getting ready for bed while not being that asshole that makes too much noise and disturbs everyone asleep in the room. I decided to delude and convince myself that most people would be out on-the-town partying and we would essentially have the room to ourselves. 

Adam put the key into the lock, the lock clicked, the door opened, and it was go time. I had such hope that it would all go okay. And then it all went to complete shit. 

I stepped inside and quickly followed Adam into the room and we closed the door behind us as we waited for our eyes to adjust. My nose adjusted first and I could immediately smell the bodies of travelers before I could see them. Then my ears adjusted and I could hear the sound of their gentle snoring and general sleep noises. My eyes finally adjusted and the room was packed with bodies. Nearly every bed was filled. Much more crowded and cramped than any hostel we had stayed at in the past. I tried my best to eye an empty bunk in the darkness but could not find one. Adam quickly located the first empty bunk as we entered and took it knowing that I would hate being next to the door (He can be all right sometimes). It just also happened to be bunk “number 4.”

Now I just had to find my bunk.  I eventually found two beds on the other side of the dorm room that looked empty, both being on the top row of beds. I noticed a faded “6” on one of the bed tags and realized it was probably my bunk number…..But then the thought occurred to me that my key tag could have also been labeled with a “9”. 

😐🤦🏾‍♀️

There was no way to tell. And to my horror, bunks “number 6 and 9” were the only other bunks that were not occupied in the room! Of course.

Yet, all was not lost, because I figured I would just match it with the locker key that was also on the key ring.

Stumbling through the darkness, people began to stir. We were no longer being ninja quiet. I eventually found the “number 6” locker “conveniently” located on the other side of the room, slid the key in and it would not turn. Adam and I tried it every which way and to my horror, the sleeping bodies to the left and right, woke up and tried to assist. They also confirmed that it was not working. 

That was okay, because I had “number 9” to try. And to my additional horror, it also didn’t work. I had come to a crossroads and I decided to go with the “number 6” bed and locker.

I checked for signs of anyone else’s items while using my phone’s flashlight. I saw a simple white towel sitting on the bed which I assumed was provided by the hostel and decided it was the perfect bunk for me. I put my large red bag in Adam’s locker and took my daypack with all my valuable documents/items into the bunk with me. The locker situation would just have to be figured out the next day when the host was there. 

I briefly climbed in the bunk and felt defeated. I did not want to be there. I had a feeling I had chosen the wrong bunk and that it wasn’t over. All I could think about was finding a nice hotel room with no additional travelers in sight or scent radius and no confusing bunk numbers! My stomach hurt and my head was spinning from the situation. My emotions started to get the better of me and before I had time to realize what I was doing, I whisper-yelled to Adam to come to my bunk. He bounded over, hurdling the bags strewn around the room, and peaked over the rails. I craned my neck so my lips could meet his ear and I firmly said, “I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to stay here. I want to go now!”

Then I waited for his response. Even in the dark, I could see his eyes widen as he stared at me trying to figure out how to talk me down from “hulk-mode.” With his safety in mind, Adam wisely responded, “Let’s go out in the kitchen, eat a few snacks and talk about the next steps.” 

We left the room and met in the kitchen. I was seething and frazzled from the whole ordeal but as we indulged on our array of cheap leftover airport snacks, my mood began to improve with every munch and chew. 

Adam was attempting to cheer me up by recounting what had occurred when we temporarily parted ways and he followed Blondie around the corner. Needless to say, they weren’t pleased and gave him a interrogation-style series of questions when he tried to ask for some more information about the hostel. He eventually gave up and retreated back to the kitchen where we had rejoined our efforts before entering the dorm room. The couple was obviously on the paranoid side and he realized it was best to leave them be. 

As his story, and my continued judgement of the couple, were coming to a close, the front door began to open and in walked a heavily intoxicated Croatian man in his late 20’s. It was clear he was returning from a night of drinking and smoking something other than cigarettes and was always 1 to 2 steps away from passing out or falling over. 

He looked at us, creepily smiled with glazed over eyes and wandered into the same room that we were assigned. I braced for our moment of reckoning realizing that he must have occupied one of the empty bunks. He made a lot more noise just getting the room door open than we did the entire time we spent trying to locate my bunk so I was happy someone “out-assholed” us. 

Adam and I barely had time to look at each other when the Croatian man came barreling out of the room and started drunkenly accusing us of stealing his bunk. We attempted to explain to him the “6” versus “9” debacle we experienced but he was not having it. He claimed that his little white towel that was given by the hostel should have been a clear indication someone was in that bunk. Trying to explain was futile and we listened to him continue to drunkenly rave about the slight we had caused him. His stupor would not allow him to listen to reason. 

Eventually, I stood up as he followed me with drunken rage, went into the other room, dramatically removed my stuff from “his” bed and put it on “number 9” and stormed out of the room ignoring the rest of what the drunken dude had to say. I had had enough! I just wanted to go to bed and made it extremely clear to Adam that was my immediate goal. 

Adam tried to calm me down but the night had been too much for my PMS-stricken body. We quickly got ready for bed and I retreated to bunk “number 9” but along the way I made sure to give a long glare at the now snoring drunk Croation man. I made myself a promise that if anyone disturbed me claiming to have bunk “number 9,” that they and the bunk would end up flipped over and a victim of my wrath. 

After stumbling through the dark one last time to say goodnight to Adam, I went back to my bunk and fell into a deep sleep filled with images of “6’s” and “9’s”. Luckily, no one disturbed me. 

And as a side note, that hostel ended up being one of our favorites of the entire trip and the Croatian man turned out to be just as creepy even when not intoxicated. And since that fateful night, I have stayed in dozens of hostel dorm rooms with little issue. But I always make sure to double check for small white towels that could be claiming beds and 6’s that could be 9’s.