Tales from a Hostel Bunk: Vienna

Paris' Gare du Nord: pretty, but very cold
after dark in February, mostly due to a large
surplus of windows and open doors.
Photo credit: Evan Bench/austinevan

February 2006, Vienna, Austria. Yanking my suitcase over a crack in the pavement, I exchanged a look with my friend as we neared the address of our hostel for the next few days. Maybe it was the hours of waiting at Paris' freezing Gare du Nord late the evening before or the long overnight train ride to Vienna, but the neighborhood didn't seem particularly welcoming and I was starting to wonder what we'd gotten ourselves into. Neither of us had ever stayed at a hostel before and, though we'd taken the precaution of booking a female-only room, I was nervous. What if it was awful? What if our roommates were mean, or wanted to party at 3am or poked through our things?

The image in my mind's eye of the unknown hostel took on a dark, sinister quality and by the time we'd found the building, the next few nights had begun to seem like the rest of my life. Then we stepped into Wombat's The City Hostel - "The Base" and I started to relax. In a lobby furnished with a bright red phone booth straight off of a London street corner and a reception desk that looks more like it should be setting up adventure tours than handing out room keys, it's difficult to be nervous about your surroundings. And once you talk to the friendly staff (who further endear themselves by handing you a voucher for a drink at the basement Wombar), glance at the spacious, colorful breakfast room and arrive in front of a bright blue door decorated with a fiercely pink sign declaring the room beyond it a "Pink Wing" (female-only room), it's all but impossible not to feel at home.

The Riesenrad, a Vienna landmark since its 1897 construction.

Our "Pink Wing" was a four-bed room. One of the other two women was also American, spending several months touring Europe, and the other was an Australian winding down two years of traveling the world with a base and a part-time nursing job in Britain. The four of us found that we had quite a bit in common and within an hour were heading out in search of dinner, with our Australian roommate - who spoke German - leading the way. It was a fun evening, with conversation ranging from favorite places visited to languages spoken to the plastic content in Australian money. And the neighborhood turned out to be quiet, rather than creepy.

The next afternoon, after a day of chilly sightseeing and lots of coffee, we followed our Australian roommate's directions back from central Vienna - straight up Mariahilfer Straße back to the neighborhood where the hostel was located - with no problem.

One of Vienna's tributes to Mozart, in the
Burggarten, which I would have loved to see in
the spring, with the flowers planted in the treble
clef in bloom.

Vienna wasn't entirely what I had expected and, although it's home to some beautiful fine arts, I didn't feel much of a connection to the city or its people, which was unusual for me. I enjoyed seeing Mozarthaus Vienna, drooling at the display of grand pianos behind the window of Steinway-Haus, having a cultural excuse to drink coffee and eat pastries and wandering through the vast and impressive Oberes Belvedere, but the feeling of a temporary home, of instant connection to the culture and the people that I'd grown used to in traveling through France, Italy and England was missing. (The one significant connection I felt in Vienna was when I saw Gustav Klimt's painting, Der Kuss, in the Oberes Belvedere, and was able to spend as long as I wanted standing in front of it, absorbing the emotion and the incredible combination of colors and patterns in the painting.) Without the genuinely warm and welcoming atmosphere of the hostel to go back to every evening, the whole experience might have felt rather soulless.

Instead, I had friends - old and new - to eat dinner with, write postcards and debate literature and politics with in the Wombar downstairs in the evening and eat breakfast with in the morning before braving the bone-chilling February weather. Wombat's The City Hostel - "The Base" in Vienna is one of my two favorites out of all the hostels I've stayed at, and I feel very lucky to have had my first visit to a hostel be in such a clean, well-run, comfortable and welcoming one, with people who showed me what a great experience a hostel stay can be.

Wombat's The City Hostel - "The Base" is an easy ~2km walk or a short subway ride from Vienna's city center. Rooms range from private doubles and triples to six beds, and female-only rooms are available. Each room has its own ensuite bathroom with shower, and bed linens, luggage storage and in-room lockers are provided free of charge. The hostel is open 24 hours, with no lockout or curfew, and there are both pay-as-you-go computers with internet access and free WLAN connections available. What my friend and I were most amused by was the vending machine in the lobby that sold everything from t-shirts to condoms. There's also a coffee vending machine that makes warming up on chilly days much more pleasant! I don't remember what we paid, but room rates seem to have stayed very reasonable, currently ranging from €12,00 to €20,00 per person per night for a four- or six-bed room, depending on the season.

Tales from a Hostel Bunk: Prague

I walked into the four-bed room and frowned. Nothing had changed since I'd swung back to the hostel to drop a few things off mid-afternoon: there was still only one bed other than mine occupied, and the things on it still didn't look the least bit feminine. Coed dorm rooms, as long as they were small, weren't so bad, but me and just one guy, in a room at the end of the hall? That was a little weird, and potentially creepy.

The Astronomical Clock in Prague's Old Town Square,
a 10-minute walk from my hostel and one of my
favorite parts of the city.

My roommate of the night before, a very sweet British-American woman a few years older than I was who had been teaching English in the Czech countryside for two years, had left to catch a flight before dawn. The pair of American guys, also on spring break, with whom I'd shared a van from the airport to the city center the day before and who had turned up at my hostel after realizing the one they'd booked was a disaster, were apparently already out for the evening. Since breakfast had revealed the other occupants of Apple Hostel to be mostly quiet pairs who didn't make eye contact, I wondered what other solo traveler had shown up. And hoped he was short, with less muscle mass than your average 12-year-old.

Don't get me wrong, meeting other travelers is the best part of staying in a hostel, but the idea of sleeping in a room with an unknown man and no one else had my internal solo female traveler alarm clanging a warning. I try to stay in female-only rooms whenever possible, but Apple Hostel didn't have any rooms designated as such for the time I was there.

My first full day in Prague, during the boat portion
 of a walking/boat tour of the city center, with Karlův Most,
Malá Strana and the Hrad behind me.

A key turned in the lock while I was contemplating putting my shoes back on to head out for an hour at a café before dinner, and I bargained with myself: if he set off any "creepy guy" signals in my head, I'd ask about switching to another room, but it was unfair to judge a fellow traveler without even exchanging a few words of conversation. I took a deep breath and fixed a cautious smile on my face as the door opened.

Rather than short and frail, my new roommate turned out to be a tall German with a proclivity for skiing, mountain climbing and hiking. Oops. But he also seemed to tune in quickly to the fact that I wasn't entirely comfortable and set about making casual conversation. We discovered common interests in our mutual love of the outdoors and languages (although his near-native English was light-years beyond my limited German), and spent a pleasant hour talking about places we'd been and others we hoped to visit. We didn't spend much time together during the few overlapping days of our respective stays, but he was a pleasant roommate and seemed careful to respect my personal space and to avoid doing anything that might make me nervous, which I greatly appreciated.

I loved all the colors used in Prague's architecture, like on
these buildings, seen through an arch of Karlův Most.

I can't say the experience made me any less wary of sharing a room with a solo traveler of the opposite sex, and I still look first for female-only rooms when I'm traveling alone. But sharing a room with a solo male traveler who turned out to be one of the most respectful, polite and easy-going guys I've ever met was a good reminder that, while it pays to be on your guard when traveling - solo or otherwise - you never know who you'll meet or what interesting conversations you might have if you give the people around you a chance.

(For those curious about Apple Hostel itself, it's a decent-enough hostel within walking distance of both Wenceslas Square and Old Town Square. The rooms are clean and spacious; the only thing that made me a little nervous was that the top bunks didn't have rails around them or anything to keep people sleeping there from falling out. The breakfasts provided when I was there were fairly stale and I preferred to seek out my own. The communal bathrooms were kept in decent shape, although the showers were slow to drain and the shower setup will give Americans pause: three beach-style shower heads along one wall of the shower room, with no dividers between them or between that section of the room and the sinks. I'd stay there again because of the location, but if I found something in the same price range that seemed nicer or more welcoming, I wouldn't hesitate to try that instead.)