Turn Left At The Iron Curtain: The 4 Worst Hostels I’ve Stayed In

“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way”.

Leo Tolstoy

The opening line of Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina is one of the most famous in literature. The Russian’s point was that there are myriad qualities that must exist for a family to be happy. And every unhappy family falls short in a different way, each as unique and lachrymose as the next. Two families may be equally despairing, but that despair will be rooted in a different tragedy each and every time.

At the risk of contriving this insight to the point of contortion, I believe this wisdom to be equally applicable to the vicissitudes of hostels. I would not have been able to travel nearly as much as I have were it not for budget 20-bed dorms and hostel bars flogging bargain beer that expired over a 1 week previous. I doubt I’m alone in being indebted to the concept which, twinned with budget airlines, have made international travel (until recently at least) so cheap and accessible to millions of people. Some of my fondest travelling memories and friendships were forged in hostels and it is their variety that spawns such bliss.

But good lord there are some horrendous hostels out there. Each a shambles in their own shambolic way. Below are some of the prime offenders.

I’ve chosen not to dispense the actual name of each hostel, primarily because I have no backbone. But specifics are available on request.

1. Wroclaw, Poland

The forlorn, borderline derelict, nature of this spot was remarkable for its lack of charm. It was a showpiece for every conceivable quality of abandonment and neglect despite actually being at capacity each day. Every night I trundled back and felt as welcome as Luis Figo returning to the Camp Nou, clad in his Real Madrid white and peppered by pennies and bottles. If I wasn’t rustling in the bedsheets having been awoken by a slammed door at 3am I was flirting with frostbite trying to decipher the ludicrously convoluted combination lock on the front door or literally lugging a roommate across the floor to get him in a position less disposed to snoring. The Spaniard in question had stumbled into the dorm having negotiated a steep staircase and winding corridor but quite literally fell at the final hurdle as climbing into his bed proved his undoing. Not since awakening Snorlax in a Pokemon GameBoy game has such a vast lump of lard commanded of my attention so comprehensively.

To their credit, the hostel did provide a breakfast, although it was sufficiently desultory to foster a fervor for fasting. The kitchen was so dreary my memories of it are entirely black and white and the white bread on offer was mouldier than the petri dish from which Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin.

Needless to say, the notion that the Iron Curtain came down with the Soviet Union is a myth. Churchill declared it to run “from Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic” in 1946 but in 2020 it encircles a single destitute hostel on the northern fringe of Wroclaw.

2. Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina

I loved Sarajevo, and have previously written about it in effusive terms although I couldn’t describe it as ‘pretty’. Many pockets of the city are so turgid that they have the semblance of a love-child between a gargoyle and a cement mixer. Prosaic, haunting but hardly inviting.

All the more so when you are hopelessly lost. And my hostel made damn sure of that.

My directions were concise. Get the metro to the ‘COBANIJA’ stop, a journey estimated to last no more than 10 minutes. Given the shocking state of the metro itself, I was unsure as to whether I could even stomach a journey any longer.

The Sarajevo metro runs a circular route, beginning and ending outside its imposing Central Train Station. I confirmed my destination with the driver who had clearly been in absentia when social niceties and good manners were covered in school. His confirmatory grunt was barely audible although sufficiently gruff to be consistent with the train’s decor.

As we trundled along the banks of the Miljacka my expectations quickly fell faster than Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s heart rate when he was assassinated along this same river in 1914. Stop after stop passed by as the Sarajevo citizenry milled in and out, up and down the carriage. I remained perched in my steel chair. Clearly I had totally missed ‘COBANIJA’ and pondered the chance that it was simply a fictional concoction for the amusement of hostel staff. Over 30 minutes passed before the train again slid back in front of the Central Train Station, no less domineering than it was half an hour prior. I sat, cynical and morose, eyes transfixed on the driver as he peered down the carriage and managed to sustain a gaze into my eyes entirely void of emotion. He slowly waddled off the train for a smoke break, seemingly satisfied in the knowledge that I would remain wedged inside the train, which was little more than a Faraday Cage only less safes, for eternity.

To his credit, he did usher me off once we rolled to the stop ”Pošta” on my second circumnavigation. I remain entirely bemused as to what cryptic chicanery I was expected to perform to deduce that this was the stop ‘COBANIJA’. Only three consultations with strangers for further directions lay between me and a mediocre hostel hell-bent on concealing its location.

Even to those unfortunate enough to have made a booking.

3. Cusco, Peru

I was a shambles. Anyone would be. I hobbled off the bus in Cusco half the man that had boarded in Lima 22 hours previously. Lugging my back-pack across town I was disoriented and desperate but could hear hostel hip-hop vibes reverberate down the street. Perhaps things were looking up.

An informal delegation from the dreadlock appreciation society congregated outside and the lyrics of 50 Cent’s ‘I Get Money’ floated in the breeze as Mr. Cent proudly proclaimed that he would “write the check before the baby comes, who the fuck cares?” As his pearls of wisdom welcomed me through the hostel entrance I overheard a guy from England, donning a Bob Marley t-shirt, pass judgement on Inca wisdom and the demerits of corporate greed while nodding readily to the gospel according to 50 Cent. The situation was a neat encapsulation of the contradictions that made this self proclaimed ‘party hostels’ so vacuous.

The apotheosis of cringe. The epitome of ignorance. I am bursting with pride to assure you that I did not fit in.

Any worthwhile hostel has a decent bar, a friendly atmosphere and good people but, to my mind, the brand of traveller attracted to these Cusco digs squandered such an idyllic blank canvas and doused it in debauchery and hedonism. Ill-tuned guitars and an off-key renditions of American Pie was the acoustic backdrop although the menu did expand beyond Whiskey and Rye. Bland Peruvian beer was the social lubricant as guests compared travel itineraries, esoteric tattoos and levels of inebriation.

To be fair, as a party hostel, it did what it professes to do exceedingly well. But I’d rather that the Party Rocking in the House Tonight be in the house next door.

And turn the damn lights off when you’re finished.

4. Vietnam

John Lennon claimed that life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans. I suspect that he had limited experience of chain hostels but his comments are certainly applicable to them.

By chain hostels I mean those that are run by a single company and essentially copy and pasted throughout a given country. Vietnam is home to the most egregious example I’ve experienced. Each greenback-greedy iteration routinely promises an ‘authentic Vietnamese experience’ but can only ever muster a sanitized, boardroom-approved version. Menus offer burgers rather than banh mi, french fries in lieu of pho and bars charge prices so alien to the surrounding area it’s as if their tabs are denominated in a different currency. 10am check outs are a staple, preceded by breakfasts as staid and turgid as they are consistent. Bizarrely draconian ‘quiet hours’ are apparently necessary too, as if management anticipate that the majority of guests will be comprised of the Rugrats and Dora the Explorer.

It’s a regimented experience masquerading as exactly what it can never be. Because a chain hostel, complete with terms, conditions and a concrete code of conduct, can ultimately only offer the form of risible experience that I believe to be incongruous with the serendipity and spontaneity that backpackers crave. The quest for an ‘authentic’ experience is largely forsaken once the booking is made as the backpacker’s quest to align aspirations with action inches out of reach.

Because you won’t learn about real Vietnamese life in a chain hostel. You’ll rarely be treated to a particularly robust account of Vietnamese history and you will meet almost zero people from the country itself. To my mind, the opportunities for personal growth and unique experiences will be largely spurned.

A pleasant stay awaits. But backpacking should be far more than that.