Assuming that anyone is still reading this after The Ballad Of Pukey Van Der McGee, here’s something of an update on the current situation.
That building on the left is the High Street Hostel; Window of the Lord of the Rings room was the one just above the outcropping at the far end, before the yellow-ish building starts.
Raw Hostelity
Merry & Pippin eventually left the hostel, bound for The Shire & home, though they called it … “Spain”? Am i spelling that right? It doesn’t sound like a Hobbit sort of name.
I had the room to myself for a number of nights, which was nice for a change. (and not at all creepy, unlike at the Freehand Chicago, which got disturbing at about midnight for some reason; only time I’ve ever been glad to hear someone arrive late at night)
Eventually a trio of English medical students running away from those folks who still had exams showed up.
It’s not a bad hostel, aside from the bathrooms, which are … Is there a category beyond ‘cramped’? Like, super-cramped or something? Because they’re that. This turned out to be a wonderful motivation to go to the gym, just to use a shower you didn’t have to turn sideways to get into, or a toilet where they’d accounted for feet.
They were comfortable with throwing people out, which is nice; Heard one guy being bounced because, while he was theoretically working there, nobody had actually caught him at it. Another guy was bounced for stinking up his dorm room with a huge pile of very dirty laundry, and the manager told him that the only reason he’s not been thrown out at 10pm, when the complaint was made, is that he wasn’t there to be thrown out.
Somewhere in here Gulo T., who was staying at another hostel with hopefully better showers, landed a job while in the pub. As in, left the pub to do a phone interview, and got the offer about 15 minutes later.
We went to a karaoke bar to celebrate this, and I discovered some unexpected things on their playlists.
Sadly the High Street Hostel has a two week maximum stay, so I had to leave.
The maximum stay seems to have a loophole for folks who work there, according to one of the folks who worked there.
Moved on to a place in Tollcross, the Light House, which seems to be part of a loose association of low-key Christian hostels around the world.
I couldn’t see this poster without dropping “Keep the vampires from your door” into the text.
Nice place, not a fan of the beds†, but it had a nice community feel; It was here that an idle conversation allowed me to find the Greatest Job Ad Ever!
And a shoes-off policy, which at least limited the ‘clomp’ factor on the stairs.
† Putting extra layers of padding and foam on a bed doesn’t make it better, it just makes it more likely to induce sea-sickness.
There was a special case of a room-mate this time; Not at the Pukey Van Der McGee level, but memorable in her own way.
Unpacked using the tried and true “witnesses reported an explosion” technique, spent most of the day somewhere else, and the hours between 11pm and 3am coming in and out of the room, turning on the light every time and leaving it on when she left, while people were trying to sleep.
The only thing which stopped us from, as it were, losing our shit at her is that it was pretty clear that something was going badly wrong for her. Not sure what; There were some language issues, and after the second night, some ‘giving a shit’ issues.
Sometime in here I managed to navigate the NHS and get an appointment to see a doctor.
I started at the pharmacy, on the grounds that they’d be the ones dealing with any eventual prescription, so maybe would know how I could get one in the first place. The were very helpful, pointed me at the nearest medical centre, and told me that I’d need to tell them that I’m a ‘temporary resident’, which did seem to be the magic words.
Turns out that, due to reciprocal agreements, I didn’t have to pay anything for the GP visit, the Script, or the Medication.
I also didn’t have to show any ID at all.
I’m assuming that this is an older version of the Hostelworld logo.
Does … Does this make anyone else think of that analogy from Stranger Things? With the ant on the tightrope?
The hostel was booked out after a week, so there was a grand exodus as everyone filed out to find new hostels.
I went to the Safestay, which is a bit bland, but a high-quality bland.
There was already someone in the room when I got there, who had a familiar unpacking technique.
My stuff is the pink & green bags on bunk 4 – Everything else in this shot that isn’t a part of the hostel belonged to one person, who somehow survived the explosion.
A few more people arrived during this time, including someone who inspired the following;
While it’s a nice & relaxing thing to be woken, lying in your very comfy hostel bed, by a slowly building piece of music from the Lion King ‘in the yard a penguin on a viaduct’ school, gradually bringing you to wakefulness, do you know what’s even better?
NOT being woken by a slowly building piece of music from the Lion King ‘in the yard a penguin on a viaduct’ school.
Amazingly, this can be achieved by turning your fucking phone alarm off if you’re not planning to get up. That’s “off”, not “snooze”.
There’s a subtle distinction, I grant you, but a dead giveaway is that if the slowly building piece of music from the Lion King ‘in the yard a penguin on a viaduct’ school plays _again_ a while later, as happened this morning, you hit “snooze”.
Sadly, evidence suggests that said person and her relatively blameless traveling companion were from NZ or Australia;
I should point out that the vast majority of the hostel experience was utterly mundane; I’m mentioning the outliers here.
Pukey Van Der McGee, Captain Thrashalot (who caused the whole bunk to shake despite how well constructed it was) – These are rare and precious moments which hopefully will Never Happen Again.
Oh, and here’s the job ad I mentioned earlier, as a way of ending the post on a moment of awesome; Found because a couple of us in the lounge at the Light House were jobhunting, someone mentioned pirates, and we got curious.