You’ll be needing this to understand the full spatial impact and relevance of the tale unfolding here.
OK, that’s a lie; I just felt like putting in a picture, if only because the rest of this has no pictures, and that’s a good thing in this case.
I wrote about this on the Social Medias, so here’s what was written, with possibly relevant footnotes;
OK, the appeal of job+place has grown three sizes tonight.
There’s a sportsball event on, so things are a bit loud out there, but it wasn’t too bad. Ignorable, shall we say.
Then ‘bunk 7’ staggered in, very drunk, eventually undressed in a way that gave the whole room a hole¹ eyeful, and passed out.
Then ‘bunk 8’, who started as ‘bunk 5’ until someone with limited English comprehension took it, came back with a companion who may have been the girlfriend who lives in Edinburgh he’d mentioned, and climbed into the bunk right under mine.
I’m told that they were doing what we’re all assuming they were doing, but given how quickly they left again … I’m not awarding high marks for staying power.
Then ‘bunk 7’ started throwing up. Like, a lot.
‘Bunk 6’ had left in annoyance/disgust by this point, and a while later a staff member came in to look around², which gave me an idea as to where #6 went.
I eventually checked that #7 was still breathing & left before I gave in to the urge to drag him into the shower using his sheets.
Took a walk around (at 0230) to … Well, to calm down. The city was crawling with revelers and their remnants; I’ve seen worse, but only once.Got back, with the vague intention of setting up the computer in the hostel lobby, only to find that they’d found a room I could move to, and that #6 was already there.
Filling in some gaps here, we started with me (#4), a guy from Tokyo who can apparently sleep through everything (#2), and a guy from El Salvador (#5) whose English wasn’t up to dealing with accents yet, so a hostel in Scotland and roommates from Manchester (#8) and South Africa (#7) were … unhelpful.
Beds 1 & 3 were empty, but with bedding ready to be deployed.
Beds 6, 7, & 8 were empty but assigned to someone.
In his defense, I was impressed that #7 managed to open the door.
Even managed to find his bed on the fourth attempt, using his phone as a light source, though he lost points on the disrobe; I’ve seen a laundry rack fall down a staircase with more grace.
He did try to make it to the bathroom at one point, but noticed that #8 and friend had entered³, covered his bits, and went back to his own bed to make horrible noises.
#2, as I said, could sleep through everything, and #5 had turned himself into a burrito with the duvet and was facing the wall by the time I got up.
The hostel staff had apparently not taken #6 seriously when he complained (he was slumped in a chair in the lobby when I got down there, apparently planning to spend the night), but when I showed up from the same room with the same story, they got more serious. Also the dongpenguin who’d ‘checked’ the room got very quiet & became uninterested in eye contact, possibly because he was useless and we all knew it.
In all reluctant fairness, the guy was there during a lull in the barfstorm, and I think the mattress/sheets dealt with an amount of the … output of the exercise, so there wasn’t too much of a smell.
Thanks to the sportsball, there were no rooms available, and the hostel folks were apologetic about it, because there wasn’t anywhere else they could move either #6 or I to. Turned out this wasn’t the case; There was an entire empty 8-bed dorm, which they found after I went for a walk.
The adventure continues at maybe 0330h;
In a new room now, far away from the horrors of the night before.
Went back to get my stuff and found that two more people had arrived; they missed out on _all_ of the fun. And looked kind of hungover themselves.#7 had moved more onto the bed, so I’m assuming he lived. Either that or the guy opposite him got sick of seeing a drunkard’s arse pointed at him, wedged a broomstick up there, and used it as a lever to get the idiot back on the bed.
Is it just me, or was that overly-specific? It felt overly-specific†.
#1 & #3 had arrived while we were gone; Presumably they’d booked the rooms for crashing in after the game & post game drinking. I spotted them when I went back to the room to grab my cellphone charger; Left the rest of my stuff until morning.
It turns out that I’d missed something while I was back there, but #6 noticed it because he grabbed all of his gear, and thus got deeper into the danger zone.
OK, giving up on figuring out what ELSE was going on in that room last night. (was that a song? Primus, maybe, or Butthole Surfers?)
Turns out that when #6 went back to collect his stuff, there was someone else asleep in bunk 6.
Possibly him from an alternate universe, #6′.
OK, this is turning into a terrible ‘Prisoner’/’Mirror Mirror’ crossover, with maybe a tinge of ‘Gallagher Plus’. If you’ll excuse me, I have a script to write.
For some more context, by the time #6 swapped rooms, it had to be 0300 at least.
There’s no way they re-booked the room at 0300, so either my alternate universe theory is correct, or yet another unknown person came to be in that room. I didn’t notice them when I picked up my stuff at 0930 or so, though I did see that #8 was back.
The new & late arrivals (#1 & #3) were checking out that day, and looked … seedy like Sunday morning.
Thee were some horribly familiar ‘cat throwing up on something expensive’ noises from the bathroom at one point, but it turned out to just be a bad smoker’s cough.
And now I’m in a different room, a nicer room, a less vomity room.
#6 ran into Pukey Van Der McGee in the bar on Sunday evening, and was able to determine that he’s still staying here, in the same room, and that the hostel aren’t bouncing him. I’m assuming there’s a reason.
And aren’t you glad there were no photographs?
¹ Not a mis-spelling
² Somehow missing the pallid South African arse sticking out into the space between bunks 5 & 7
³ What?
† I’m assured that it wasn’t too specific unless someone actually did it, which I choose to interpret as “those splinters could have been from anywhere”
‘ is ‘ the notation for “alternate”, in the sense of the other one of this variable? I thought it was, but I’m not sure.