Dresden, Germany, is the first place I ever experienced the feeling of not knowing if I was going to have a safe place to sleep for a night.

I got to Dresden at one o’clock in the morning, on a bus that should have gotten there at twenty-three but hadn’t because we’d been stopped at the border between Poland and Germany for a passport check. (The officer saw my last name and thought of the football team and was like “Ah, cool!!”) The hostel was an hour’s walk away from the train station.

Also, the hostel had messaged me earlier telling me I should let them know if I expected to arrive there after 22:30, because that was when reception closed, and they hadn’t gotten back to me when I’d told them that my bus would get to Dresden after hours. I should have called them.

On top of everything else, I’d sat in the back of the bus, the seat without a power outlet, because it was cheap, and both my power bank and my phone were dying.

I started walking.

Dresden is one of the places that the allies bombed the shit out of in WWII. You can tell because the buildings are new, newer than some of the places I’ve been in America. It’s quiet there. And at night, it’s just a little scary.

I walked over a bridge across the Elbe river that separates Altstadt Dresden from Neustadt, (old-town from new-town.) Strains of Queen – “we will/we will/rock you” and “I can’t get no/satisfaction” drifted towards me across the water.

I found a power outlet in the entrance to a hotel that looked wayyyy outside of my price range; the doors were made of glass. I stood for a moment and plugged in my phone. When the man behind the desk noticed I was there, I sort of ran away.

My hostel had sent me a message. “hey, r u still coming tonight?” They said I could check in after hours.

I walked there. I got settled.

I had a bed to sleep in, and that was a good thing.