Hostel Negotiations
Dear Chewey,
I’m in Edinburgh today. One of my best friends in the whole wide world made me aware that he would be here for a week with his three brothers and all of their wives or partners, and given that I was just an island away, I figured I could take a hopper and spend a few days with them.
As I’m prone to do, I backed my way into this trip by first booking my flight, figuring it couldn’t cost too much to stay in Scotland for just a few nights. After all, I had been here for a week just a little over a year ago, and that was relatively affordable.
This assumption was incorrect, and as the sticker shock set in, this phase of my journey was quickly looking like it might land on my list of “regrets.”
Then I came across a listing for a local hostel located right on the famous Royal Mile that winds its way to Edinburgh Castle. And the cost? VERY affordable. The only catch was the most obvious one: it was a hostel.
Now, in my 20s I had always imagined traveling Europe, mingling with locals and foreigners alike in a hostel setting, saving money on lodging while hitchhiking the countrysides of these great nations. Sleeping quarters mattered very little to me, as I could often be found waking up on a couch or even a floor of friends and family.
But that was then, and this is now. I’ve simultaneously been softened in spirit while being hardened in body (and not the muscular sort of hardening, but rather the joints and everything else that hurts when it hardens).
It must have been my recent college education that caused me to think I could navigate hostel life, deluding myself into believing I could bend like it was 1999. Or maybe one of the things that has also hardened within me is my stubbornness. Whatever the reason, I looked at that “pay now” button on my screen and thought, “Yes. Yes, I will stay in a hostel.” (Somewhere in the world David Spade whispers, “Bad Idea Jeans.”)
The first test of my imaginary fountain of youth came when I decided to take a bus from Edinburgh Airport to Princes Street, which is about a ten-minute walk to my luxury resort. The walk would have been easy enough had it been flat or even slightly inclined, but the aptly named Royal Mile appears not to have been meant for peasant life and thus lies upon the highlands of the city. Even that might have been doable with mild shortness of breath had I not been toting my overstuffed backpack and rolling duffle bag. By the time I staggered up to the age-appropriate 25-year-old check-in attendant, he was warming the defibrillator paddles in anticipation of my imminent collapse.
A cheerful lad, Matthew’s accent had me fumbling for my Google Translate app, as images flashed of Rusty informing his buffoonish father that the London hotel manager checking in the Griswold family was, in fact, speaking English.
Given that I had only understood every fourth word of Matthew’s very detailed instructions, I missed the full explanation of the one word I could clearly make out: Pod. I was in room 302, had a key, and that was enough for me.
As I entered my Presidential suite, the word “pod” needed no further explanation from my highland hotel host, as I stumbled into a room with what looked like a stack of Ikea storage cubes which, I honestly thought, were for my luggage. However, upon further inspection—and upon hearing someone who appeared to be suffering from sleep apnea—it became clear that these pods would be my, and apparently seven others’, sleeping quarters.
Luckily for me, Matthew, who now appeared to be “punking” me, had assigned me pod number 5, which was a top pod that could only be reached by an incredibly sketchy-looking fire ladder seemingly constructed at a time when the bucket brigade was still the primary source of water flow. The ladder was also conveniently placed in an offset position, so as not to inconvenience the tenants of the lower pods upon exiting their respective sleeping holes. To enter my pod, I would need to ascend a ladder that looked to me to have a weight rating of 75 pounds, then defy the laws of physics by hopping up and to the left, whereupon I would land on my child-sized one-inch mattress.
Bedtime was interesting, given that my 49-year-old prostate acts as a fantastic two-hour snooze button. So if the death-defying journey to my pod was nerve-racking in a fully alert state, the three times I attempted this Houdiniesque stunt while half-asleep were nothing short of horrifying.
That said, and despite these oppressive conditions, I was actually able to sleep quite well. My theory is that my mind had convinced me I was once again in the womb of my mother, which I must have found rather cozy.
My next adventure was the shower, apparently used by all seven of my more youthful womb-mates. I very much felt like Neal Page must have as he opened the bathroom door to take a second shower after Del Griffith in the 1987 movie Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. This was not an area in which hygiene was thriving. Thankfully, I had brought Crocs on this trip and happily wore them for both minutes of my tepid shower.
But guess what, Chewey? After all of this “luxury,” this morning I finally got what I came for. I spent two hours in the luxurious company of an incredibly fine person—an American and an Oregonian no less—who performs on the streets of the Royal Mile with her 17th-century artisan instrument. We spent the morning drinking coffee and swapping some crazy travel stories (she now lives in Finland). After we said goodbye, I had all but forgotten the first-world problems of the last 16 hours. Because, in the end, what mattered most wasn’t the pods, the ladders, or the Crocs, but the unexpected joy of connection. And in that moment, Chewey, I realized: I had truly won my hostel negotiations.
