A few days ago, I was messaging back and forth with a good, old friend, and she asked me what it’s been like for me:

“So how is hostel life? I don’t really know what else to call it, lol.”

Hostel life is new, and strange, and exciting, and it’s teaching me how to live with other people, and also how to take care of myself.

Every few days, a different bed, a different kitchen, a different place to come back to.

In Hamburg, I walked an hour from the bus station to my hostel at four in the morning. The hostel was a little grimy and questionable around the edges – but there was a carpeted stage, and a loft, and a long table where I met some of the best people I’ve found on this trip.

In Berlin, the hostel occupied the bottom few floors of an old building with twisting, narrow halls and graphite on the stairway walls. It was the kind of building you could get lost in within about two minutes. If one was to go up too many sets of stairs, the lights went out, and there were piles of dusty old clothes in the corners. Possibly the kindest staff and most efficiently run place I found.

In Prague, it took me about ten minutes to the entrance to the building, even though I was standing right outside of it. The signage was small and hard to find, and the hostel shared a building with a Thai massage business on the ground floor. But there were free cookies in the kitchen, and I stayed there in the middle of the week on a Thursday; I felt like I was the only one there.

Even though each new place has its own personality and idiosyncrasies and quirks, there are some things that they all have in common, (in this one part of the world, at least.)

I typically choose to stay in dorms with six or eight bunks, total. On each unoccupied bunk there would be a mattress, a pillow, and a quilt, non of them covered. The reception desk gives each traveler a clean set of sheets – pillow case, bottom sheet, and a bag-like cover for the quilt. Each guest at the hostel is responsible for making their own bed. Beside each bunk there is a power outlet, a lamp, and possibly a small shelf.

Each guest is also issued a locker – bring your own padlock, just in case – as a safe place to store luggage for the duration of a stay.

I’ve stayed in rooms with private baths, and some hostels with only about two or three showers for everyone to share.

Then there are the kitchens. You never know what you’ll get, with kitchens. Often, the frying pans and spatulas have seen better days, and the knives could use an edge, but at least they’re there. Once, I got to a hostel with a grocery bag full of uncooked vegetables to find that their kitchen didn’t have a stove.

Sometimes, there is free coffee and tea in the mornings; a few places had all-you-can-eat breakfast buffets till noon. (When it comes to filling up a bag for later, it is easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.)

There’s a certain etiquette to shared kitchen spaces. Clean up after yourself. Label your food in the refrigerator. Thou shalt not steal. Common sense things.

That etiquette extends beyond the kitchen, too. A sign in a hallway at a hostel in Berlin reads “Please be quietly! People sleep right here.”

Backpacking hostels are the epitome of those places where tired humans at their best and worst and most open and joyful and grumpy and disgusting are thrown together into cramped spaces, and fully expected to peacefully coexist.

It’s different, from place to place.

Sometimes it’s flooded bathroom floors, and bed bugs, and waking up at seven in the morning because the people in the next bunk aren’t being subtle about it, and sometimes it’s the snoring that you’d swear to god is making the walls shake, and sometimes it’s the smell of boots that’ve been walked in for weeks and weeks.

Sometimes there is a sense of community, of shared responsibility for one another – altruism and generosity and of course you can use the frying pan when I’m done. The best moments are moments of friendliness. “Where do you come from? What brings you here? What have you seen while you were here, and what would you recommend?”

Hostel life is teaching me how to live with people. I need to be able to exist in the same space as another person’s human flaws. I need to be able to speak up and ask for what I need, which is frequently challenging and I need to be able to fend for myself. I need to be able to find out what the rules are, even if it’s through making mistakes. I need to be able to be considerate in the general direction of other people, because it makes a difference. In both directions. And I need to be able to talk to people, be with people, even strangers, because it fends off the loneliness, and it fills me with smiles.