around the world in 180 days

Yesterday we had the distinctive pleasure of meeting and sharing a room with 2 Irish gentlemen from Manchester, Dean and Bob. It was Dean’s 26th birthday and so, by the time we met them, they were both as drunk as Ted Kennedy on the 4th of July (which is to say “barely conscious”). They were both self-described English red-necks and were quite possibly the stupidest people we’ve met who didn’t have some kind of brain injury or deformity to blame it on.

They kept saying things like “I’m not racist, but those damn Pakistanis . . .” I’m no expert on racism, but I’ve found that whenever someone says the words “I’m not racist but . . .” it means that they’re racist pretty much every time. They were also disgusting, belching, farting and grabbing their crotches constantly. At one point, Dean claimed that a person has to be gay to get hired at the BBC. It’s company policy. Of course. He followed it up with the old “I don’t hate gay people. I’ve got gay friends. I just don’t want to partake in their activities.” Yep. You’ve got so many gay friends that you’re worried they’re going to try to rape you.

The next day, Bob asked me for some paracetamol, or aspirin. I told him I had ibuprofen, and when I was getting it, he launched into a bout of classic alcoholic’s remorse. “I was pretty bombed last night. We drank three bottles of vodka, were drinking since 8 in the morning. I don’t know what I said. I’m afraid I made a complete ass of myself. I’m sorry if I said anything that offended you.” Sure, Bob. You’re sorry today, but you’ll do it again tomorrow to some other unlucky soul.

Still, it’s part of the experience. Meeting people is the best thing and the worst thing about staying in hostels. Especially in the places we’ve been in in Hungary and Poland, which are old converted apartments, there is no avoiding the common areas, because there’s no where else to go. Bob and Dean have been far and away the worst we’ve met, but it was fun to make fun of them, but when they were talking to us and yesterday as we walked around town.

We told ourselves it was a good thing we met them, but I still can’t say why. Maybe it shows that idiots aren’t endemic to the USA, that the whole world’s got backward, stupid morons and that most people aren’t like that. It makes you appreciate the quiet ones that spend the evenings with their noses buried in a book or a laptop.

Tags: hostel life, Poland, Travel, Warsaw

This entry was posted on Friday, June 29th, 2007 at 3:07 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.