The Roommate
My Australian roommates were quite nice, friendly and tolerant of my staying out long, too - first because they stayed up, too, but on Saturday evening/Sunday morning things got slightly out of hand. To start at the beginning, my room is at the end of a corridor, quite a long way from the reception. Within the first three days I had to go back down as many times to have my key card "fixed" because it didn't work any more, and so did the Australians. Well, on Saturday evening one of them didn't quite manage to any more ... he just slept on the floor in the corridor, which was where I found him at 4 am, just below half a bottle of cheap red wine on the window sill, even had a name tag in case he got lost. So I fetched a new key card from the reception and complained a bit about the situation with having to come down, presenting the guy on the floor as an example. "What? There are strange people lying in the corridor?" - "No, just the guy from my room ..." As he reacted to stimuli but was unable to move by himself I just dragged him to the bed - fortunately not the upper bunk - took off the shoes, deposited the valuables we'd strewn on the way on the table and that was the last I saw of him.
So I've had the room to myself since Sunday, sleeping alone for two days now, not that I'd mind - though it comes unexpected when you book for a 6 bed dorm. Seems they only had a place in a 4 bed room left, and one of the beds was broken and got removed ...
Actually this is the first hostel experience since my school days. We did technically stay in a hostel in Budapest but this was a double room, so not quite comparable. In Central America I usually jsut took a room of my own - there were quite respectable hospedajes that rent out rooms for ~ USD 5 a night in Guatemala in 1997, so I very rarely shared rooms except with a fellow acaompañante.
In other news I've bought not one but two deep purple T-shirts (from H&M, since M&S didn't sell the right colour) and a "lick/taste/hit/break/look/shake" one from the Fringe Shop - see pic above. Due to the rain I put off the visit to Nelson's monument (purportedly granting the best view over the city), but I later walked around the castle (pictures to be posted) in search of a cinema but I suspect I'll be able to watch