London one-way!

There’s never a dull moment living in a hostel, as I’ve found this week. Everything is made that little bit more difficult because you’re literally living with about fifty people and when there’s two showers for everyone all hell breaks loose.

But that makes it a bit of a challenge: to compromise or to get your way? Which would you prefer? I mean, I’m paying to be there, so I may as well get what I pay for right? The right to shower and the right to sleep?

Let’s start with the right to shower. So I put my alarm on for 7.22 (it’s an OCD thing, don’t worry!) and 7.24, to give myself a few minutes to wake up and become alive. If I can’t do this in peace I go nutters – I’m sure Felicity will never forget this point after Germany in year 11 when our alarms went off and I asked her to leave the light off for a minute to adjust, and of course she didn’t, need I remind you Anna what happened then?! So this girl in my dorm jumps out of bed the minute she heard my alarm, which was only on vibrate anyway, and hot foots it to the bathroom. I was stunned. When she did it the second morning and spent 45 minutes in the bathroom I felt like banging my head against the wall, until I followed the advice of my work colleagues, who turned around and said set your alarm 15 minutes earlier than usual and just get up and jump in the shower straight away as I did this morning and WHAM – I got her back real good! Don’t mess with the Mara!

The right to sleep is a bit more difficult. Of course hotels located close to busy areas of town, thriving with people coming and going on a daily basis – these are the party hostels. Ours is a quiet location, where most of us are long-termers and need to go to work every morning, and party on the weekend. But some idiot decided a Wednesday night party was in order, and again last night. So as the only one who a) can be bothered to get out of bed and b) has the guts to say what I think and c) don’t really care what anyone thinks about that, I walked out in boxers and singlet for a quiet chat just to say hey, go in the bathroom (which is part bathroom but part kitchen area) and shut the door and everyone who’s trying to sleep will be happier than you guys yelling at the top of your lungs in the corridor. Peace of mind. I got sleep after that.

That being said, I am having a blast and meeting a whole variety of new people – way too many Aussies! But also Spanish, Romanian, English, Kiwis, Saffas, Texans, French…it’s like traveling when you can’t yet travel! The different languages you hear, everyone’s got a great story to tell, and everyone comes to work in a different area. For life’s little traumas, there’s definitely enough of a positive experience to go round 🙂

But happy to say I’m heading off to Spain next week for La Tomatina – yay! Watch this space for the latest on the tomato fight in Bunol, and travels in Valencia and Madrid! Ciao!

Tags: Travel

This entry was posted on Friday, August 22nd, 2008 at 4:23 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.