The Hostel Chronicles, Episode 3: Meanies

The highlight of working at a hostel and being a writer at the same time is that I get a ton of ideas for characters. Each person you meet in a day has the potential to spark a new life--albeit a fictional life. You have your magnetic travel mongers, your shy, questioning first-timers, your easy-going sight-seers, your logical planners, etc. And within these categories come multitudinous layers of being and personality. As a hostel worker, I get to witness all the niceness and warmth of humanity like a gentle coastal wave.

Then, you get the meanies.

Visual approximation of a meanie

Oh, do they exist, and they come at you like swinging pendulums of doom, like car crashes and bad milk. They rot your day into a tiny piece of sidewalk chewing gum and you don't recover until that night or even the next morning (preferably after a couple glasses of wine). 

Most of the time it happens because people are not aware of what a hostel is and how it works. Yesterday I had a group of 8 dudes from Amsterdam, and two came waltzing in (never a good sign when someone waltzes into reception, especially not if they're wearing neon yellow reflector vests). They shot questions at me about the amenities: breakfast, towels, internet, etc. I answered them congenially. Then... they asked about parking. Alas, there is none at the hostel that's private. Nowhere in the entire city is there private parking for businesses. It's all on the street. Old city with crazily winding roads and alleyways = driver's nightmare. So I explained to the young men the situation, apologizing for the confusion. They were having none of it and glared at me as though I were some hired stripper who refused to take her clothes off. Yeah. That bad.

These boys continued to screech at me, demanding discounts and what have you, and of course I couldn't offer them that. They made me call my poor manager (who was in the middle of getting her hair cut) and bother her. On and on it went, they threatened me with "horrible reviews" the likes of which I'd never seen before.... Just all-around meanies, ya know?

"And they were as mean
as sun-dazzled bats..."

So, since there was nothing I could do or say to console them, I took a good mental picture of the leaders of the group, and decided to add them to my list of future story villains and antagonists. Oh yes. You know that t-shirt that says, "Watch out, you might end up in my novel"? Well, it's factual. And I'm not afraid to use names, either. Everyone will know who the villains are and what they did!

Anyway, like I said, the meanies are people who refuse to let things go and are handling a situation in an irrational manner that hurts everybody involved. Even if you're upset, if you're dealing with someone who is being kind and trying to help you through it, you don't treat them like trash still. You just don't. That's not the warmth of humanity, that's the cloud of meanness that shows how afraid you are of the world deep down inside your mean little soul. That's my humble opinion. (And those guys WILL end up in my novel. And they will be sorry.)

Besides... why drive when you can go by Segway?

Oooooh, mama.

The Hostel Chronicles, Episode 2: The Icelandic Elves

I met an Icelandic man the other day at work. He made a big impression on me as a person, but even more so with his stories of home....

With hair as fair as a silver mountain top, he glowed like a Chinese lantern in the night. Eyes a distilled water blue, and skin pasty yet not underexposed. I could tell he'd seen many winter days--or nights, rather. Iceland's winters come with impenetrable darkness, usually about 20 hours a day of it. For 4 hours you may see a bit of sunlight, but the rest of the time... I couldn't imagine it. No wonder he looked nocturnal, with cavernous irises like a Slow Loris. His demeanor was also slow, but not without energy. A gentle soul, that Icelandic Man.

Iceland's terrain. Yep, I'd totally live there.

And in the summer? Well, daylight nonstop. At one in the morning, it may look the way six in the morning looks to us here in Prague. They have to use black curtains and eye masks to get to sleep. The sun never goes away. I thought, too much sun is just as bad as too little sun. How could someone stand it? But if you've lived there your whole life, I suppose there's nothing strange about it.

Icelandic Man told me about the snowy mountains, the greenery to rival Ireland's, the capes and forests and beautiful rock formations... If you love the beauty of nature, go to Iceland. But besides Reykjavik, there isn't much as far as towns go. He said they don't like to call them villages, but towns. That's very important. Villages is a word reserved for a different kind of habitation, that of the elves.

An elvish village, complete will little water well.
Yep, I'd totally live there. 

Yes, elves. Trolls as well, but he didn't get into those as much. In a voice as serious as a box of explosives, he described how elves live in the forests and mountainsides, in mysterious little stone houses with grass roofs, and how roads and buildings are built around these sites in respect for the elves' territories. Elves are sly little creatures who--when they have any excuse--will disarm and betray you. That's how they get their kicks. "They're certainly not like Lord of the Rings elves," said Icelandic Man. "Our elves are small and grim. They're ugly little tricksters." For instance, if a car driving by an elvish village doesn't stop by the side of the road to leave a gift, the rest of the journey might be cursed... If a hiker wants to pass by an elvish village safely, he must bring along either a poem to recite to the elves, or, even better, a piece of silver.

Small and grim? How 'bout compact and broodingly sexy?

So if you're planning on visiting Iceland, remember to pack your grandmother's silver cutlery, or your old silver costume jewelry, or maybe even a nice silver goblet. If you want to pay respects to the elves (and trust me, you want to) then you must have gifts. Icelanders take their non-human creatures very seriously, almost religiously. It was a whole other cultural phenomenon I'd never encountered. What could be more magical?

Next stop for me, the ever-whimsical traveler: Iceland.