Woken up from a deep sleep by a militaristic bean shaven man, quite like his counterpart in the youth hostel in Sofia, Bulgaria. They must be from the same gene pool. He was shouting for everyone to get up but no one paid attention to him and rolled over back to sleep. But he was back 20 minutes later in a fury. Then the maid came in and started babbling and whining which was enough to rouse everyone and avoid her plaintive pleas. I went out after 10 to buy some grapes and reached for a wallet that was not there. It is bad enough misplacing your wallet at home but in a foreign country it is almost guaranteed to give you a panic attack. I roared back to the youth hostel and luckily it was there. Fatigue dullens you!
As for youth hostels I do not like being woken up and ejected for most part of the day. That’s not the way I have been travelling in Europe. Plus you are stuck with gringos of a certain age as opposed to a sprinkling of different ages. And most of the people saying there are bright eyed and bushy tailed rookie travellers clutching Europe on $5 and $10 dollars a day and their Eurail pass. A type of ghetto is what a youth hostel can be. A institutionalized prison no self respecting hippie would stay at. Well I headed back and bought a kilo of grapes, bread and sliced meat. I returned to the youth hostel and met an American guy and we went out bought supplies for our supper consisting of sparkling wine, meat, bread and green peppers. Had a good dinner conversation finishing off the wine and I went to the disco with my Norwegian friend. We met a Yugoslavian girl called Rada there and we were back at the hostel at 1 a.m.