How Not To Suck at Hostel Life
- The Coastal Campaign
- Oct 21, 2018
- 3 min read
Updated: May 23, 2019
Hostels are a traveller's best friend.
Some of the best experiences I have ever had and some of the greatest people I have ever met, I came to know from my time in hostels. That includes my girlfriend of almost 3 years, Roxy. So who needs Tinder? It’s a chance to get off your phone and immerse yourself in the real life Tinder.
The friends you will make in hostels will seriously last the test of time. Last year Roxy and I met up with 16 of our friends from Western Australia, in Munich to go and smash Oktoberfest.
One of the reasons you are able to make friendships like this is by not sucking as a housemate in the hostel you live in. Yes - its pretty hard to be best friends with someone who you curse at 5am every morning as their 7th alarm wakes you up.
So here are some super simple tips to not pissing off the people you live with.
Ready. Steady. GO!
1.The Multiple Alarms
As I have just hinted - this is probably the worst thing you can do in a shared dorm room.
Everybody gets grumpy when they get woken up earlier than they need to. You may have to be up at 5am to go and start work but that doesn’t mean the other 7 people in your room need to be up then too.
2. The late night gossip and snack session
Ok, I’ll admit this one can be a bit trickier as it usually comes after a good night on the drink. You’ve stumbled home and all you want is to crawl into bed, destroy that bag of crisps and chat about that hot guy or girl at the bar - the one you definitely could have pulled if you had wanted to. But that’s what common areas are for.
So grab your food from the kitchen and go sit on the comfy sofa and snack and chat until the sun comes up.
3. Do your dishes
Hostel kitchens are often disgusting, horrible places at the best of times. There are never enough pots and pans and whatever other stuff you need to cook your instant noodles.
Don’t make it worse by cooking up a storm and then leaving your dirty dishes in the sink for the next person to clean up. There’s nothing worse than going to cook and having to clean other peoples dirty, greasy dishes before you even start.
4. Help a brother out
Never be afraid of a good deed in the hostel. It will go a long way and people will really notice it.
It may be as simple as giving someone a lift into town with you to get their groceries. Or giving them a lift to work or maybe trying to hook them up with a job where you work. Including someone new or shy in a group dinner is a huge deal to that person.
People always want to be buddies with the awesome, friendly person in the hostel.
5. Don’t be afraid to have a bit of craic
We’re here for a good time not a long time. We didn’t start travelling to just work, eat and sleep. We did it to have a bloody great time with our mates.
So join in on the group dinner, go on that waterfall daytrip and for goodness sake have a few too many beers with the crew when you can. Like I said, these are people that could genuinely be best friends or more (eyoooooo) for life. So drink too much and sleep too little while you can.
I believe it was Aristotle who said “When you’re old and grey are you gonna remember the nights you stayed in and did nothing or are you gonna remember the big nights out and mad adventures with your mates?” Truer words have never been spoken!
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