Reims update

---

This is a true story:

My hostel in Reims was, I'm sad to say, of lesser quality than the Champagne. In fact, it was more of a hospital than a hostel: there was no rousing party scene like in Paris, just hall after hall of nondescript, cheap, uncomfortable maladorous rooms. However, I was pleased to see when I approached the desk a price of €11.60 which probably can't be bested in all of France. I also noticed that you could rent out the beds for an entire month for just over €350.
My room, it seems, was occupied by one of these monthly renters. I knew upon entering, since he had stacks of cans on a shelf, and hanging clothes (not the signs of a backpacker). More strange, he was sound asleep when I entered at some time in the afternoon. I departed quickly and when I returned that night he was gone. I did not go to sleep until around midnight and he still did not show; but the next morning he was there, sleeping. I thought it odd that I never saw this guy except while he was sleeping: my only knowledge of his appearance was that he was of a rather beastly size, unkempt and ill-shaven.
I left that morning to rent a bike and returned around 11 to have a snack of warm yogurt and stale bread. There he was -- a hulking form sound asleep on the bed. I was facing the wall, enjoying my petit dejuneur, when without warning a giant shout arose from behind me. I quickly turned, startled, and stared into the face of some ape-like, completely nude monster screaming the loudest string of insults ever directed my way. He cursed me in three different languages: French, Spanish, and a bit of English. Mostly I noticed the ever-descriptive cry of "FUCK" yelled over and over again, interspersed with french (which I can't repeat or spell), and long strings of "PUTO VERGA etc. FUCK etc." He then leapt from his bed, turning his hairy bare, slightly flabby ass to my face and announcing "TRABAJO! TRABAJO!" he proceeded to hurtle economy-sized cans of lentils and chick peas across the room, slamming them into the opposite side of the entryway and leaving deep indentions in the plaster. At this point I feared for my life. Next, he whipped off the blanket which was still semi-covering his crotch, bundled it into a ball and tossed it, him an unwillingly roused behemoth, into the bathroom. It knocked the toiletry shelf onto the ground, where it shattered, sending shards skittering across the floor in an explosion of glass. He walked over it all and yanked his bathrobe off its hook, throwing it haphazardly about him. Throughout all of this, his gesticulations and curses had not ceased, but upon he leaving he paused to turn and spit loudly upon the floor, as if to desecrate the ground upon which I walked, I suppose.
I quietly finished my yogurt, somewhate befuddled by the whole affair, and then left thereafter -- as I had been intending to do. I did not see him awake again.

---