Elsewhere I have told you I chose to stay in hostels instead of hotels, short-term rentals, guest houses, and more.
You might want more details about how I came to this decision.
The first step was to try staying in a hostel here in the U.S. before committing to this strategy for an entire European trip.
I chose to travel to Chicago, reasonably near my home. I stayed in a hostel for five nights, including Friday night for a taste of the weekend.
In short, the stay was delightful. For the first couple of nights, I had only one roommate even though I was in a four-person all-female “dorm room,” as they are called.
My young roommate was asleep and so still every time I came into the room, and for a while I wondered if I were living with a corpse. Eventually I caught her awake and asked her if she needed any help, thinking she must be very sick.
She said no, she was just extremely tired.
As the weekend approached, we gradually took on one more roommate and then another, until the room was full.
One young woman on top of me in the bunk bed came in and started exclaiming in the vein of “oh, no” almost immediately.
To make the long story short, she had stopped in the chapel at O’Hare and there she inadvertently traded luggage with a guy from India.
Eventually she figured out how to contact him and trade suitcases.
That was as close to drama as there was in the room all five nights.
I loved the lounge and breakfast room experiences, the always-on coffeepot, and the good variety of people I met. I met international guests of varying ages, including a recent Israeli retiree. I visited briefly with a retired couple from elsewhere in the U.S. And lastly, I found I enjoyed talking with young people from all over the world.
I encountered no evidence of the horror stories you might hear about staying in hostels. No one got so drunk as to be belligerent, no one was loud and obnoxious in the middle of the night. I didn’t see any smuggled drugs, sex out in the open, or people stealing dirty clothes out of others’ luggage.
In short, after that week, I knew I could do this. And I did, for about 100 nights in Europe so far.
Incidentally I also have stayed in good hostels in Denver and New York by now. Try it; you might find the loss of privacy worth the monetary savings.
I spent as much on a lunch in Chicago as I did to sleep in the hostel that night, but to me, those trade-offs are worth it.
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