so you've seen the movie hostel...

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....i haven´t, but i experienced the opening seen of it in venice. so marc and i trained to venice from rome and got in around 8 in the evening with no place to stay - but no worries, because i have my trusty 'let's go europe' guide with names and locations of hostels. so off we go, traipsing through the city, jaws dropping as we turn each corner, venice is truly magnificent. so bax pax is the hostel that we're looking for, advertised as super cheap, right in the middle of the old section, excellent atmosphere...the book really sells this place. so walking, walking, it starts to drizzle a bit, we're getting kind of near, but really have no idea where the place it. the maps in the guidebook are not the most delailed. so then, TORRENTIAL DOWNPOUR, no warning, the sky just opened up. we run to a 6 inch overhang and scope out the better places to take refuge. run across the piazza, i´m actually surprised and quite pleased at the speed in which i ran with a 30 lb pack in flipflops (my feet have taken a beating this trip, suffice it to say that i can't so much wear sneakers multiple days in a row and keep my feet happy) and did not fall. so now we're at a very large overhang, still getting very wet because in addition to the torrential downpour, there's also tremendous gust of wind. and the people at the restaurant that we are taking shelter at have no idea where the hostel is. since i'm more soaked than marc, i take the map and wander the square looking for the hostel, it has to be close. i finally find it...ring the doorbell...wait, ring again...wait....and then this guy comes up, tells me that the hostel moved locations but he works there, he'll take me to it. okay, so most hostels have a sign out front and a central location, bright and cheery right, so this guy starts going down an alley, i follow about 10 feet behind and i'm actually turning around often to see if someone is closing in behind me. so we get to a door, no signage, the guy opens it and tells me that the hostel is upstairs, and i´m thinking, so this is where i get kidnapped adn marc never sees me again...so i tell thie guy, um, iis there anything with the hostel name on it, anything...he looks at me funny, not understanding why in the world a single female would not be okay with going into a dark apartment building with a guy she doesn't know. clearly he has never seen any after school specials about not talking to strangers. so i tell him flat out, look, i'm not going up with you to see the hostel, there's nothing saying this is a hostel, i'll come back with my boyfriend. so i go find marc, we trudge back across the piazza, it's stopped raining by this time, so now we just looked like drowned rats. ring the doorbell, the guy comes down, shows us the hostel - and by hostel i mean his apartment that he's thrown a bunch of beds in and rents it out for exorbitant amounts. so there were maybe 15 beds in the place, NO ONE else there, nothing...it was laughable how absolute sketchy it was. kind of like when i was held up at gunpoint in a frozen yogurt store - seriously, you're really trying to pull this off? if you're going to run a pretend hostel at least put some effort into it, make up some letterhead and put a computer out front or something. so my thought was, upòn seeing the place, that if we stayed there one of us would not make it out alive in the morning. oh, and it was €60 to stay there, which is the price of a decent bed abd breakfast. and the guy was humming the entire time, like any scary shady character does in horror movies. so that place was clearly out, and as marc and i looked over our now not-so-trusty guidebook for another place, we saw the guy working at a restaurant in tehe square. he clearly just hangs out watching for people to ring the doorbell to the defunct hostel and tries to sell a bed in his apartment. so now it's getting dark, the streets of venice are virtually unnavigable in the light, so we pick another place and head over there. except i fail to notice that the place closes at 9 or so, and we get there after 9. at this point, marc is seriously considering sleeping in a boat or hopping the fence and staying in the yard of the closed hostel. right, so the last reasonable place to try is a little bed adn breakfast, the main selling point is that it's open 24 hours, so we'll be able to get in. get there, ask the man in my most pleading voice, please tell me that you have a room for tonight...he checks with the matron of the house, yes, there is room for one, wait, there's two of us, well...so we convince her to let both of us stay. we shown the room...i'm sorry, this is all we have, i hope it's okay....yeah, it was the nicest place we'd been for a month - imagine if you will a flat mattress, electricity, a toilet that you don't have to share with 50 people, warm showers that you don't have to pay for, free breakfast, we lived in luxury for a night. the place was a converted ventian palace, decorated like your grandmothers house. so hot showers, change into dry clothes, and off for a much deserved and desired beer where we met a super nice welsh couple that were missing their children, so we conveniently filled in (almost got a frre room for the next night), they generously paid for our food and drinks that night, and we'll likely stay with them at the end of the trip. so the day in venice ended much better than expected - we found a relatively cheap, €65, place to stay, good food and future friends.

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Comments

[Marc]

Man, oh, man. I am really enjoying re reading your blogs from europe. I wish i could kiss you right now. Thanks for your great writing. Love, me.