Hostels: The Cold Hard Facts

I've had to come to the realization that you can't travel really cheaply and sleep well. If you can budget a B&B trip life is golden, but no one comes to a hostel thinking they're going to catch up on some beauty sleep.

When staying in a 20 person room the odds are clearly against you. Let's break it down. There will always be people walking in and out (and here in Munich the only door slams shut no matter how hard you try to soften the sound), but let's say there will be about 10 people who are going to come home between the hours of 2 and 5. Five of those people (at least) will be boisterously drunk, and at least three will be speaking at perfectly audible levels. They'll crash around, turning lights on and off, and laughing maniacally when they drop something loudly. So, you always know that if by some chance you were asleep, it will be interrupted at some point. Then there are the other nine people who clamber into bed at roughly the same time as you. Three of those people will snore (something I cannot sleep through), one will make weird noises in their sleep, two will play annoying games on their phone/electronic device that results in an orgy of clicking noises every time they get to the tricky part of the level. The other 3 are normal people like yourself (if you are lucky). BUT, it's really cheap, so that's supposed to make up for it. On the other hand, I'm paying 13.50 euros a night for sleep deprivation. From that perspective it seems a little steep.

In the meantime I've been wandering Munich, visiting great art galleries, and eating traditional German food like Sushi and pizza. Tomorrow it's Frankfurt, then luxury with Dad and D in Weimar, Dresden and Berlin.