The city of Dali and Gaudi: Barcelona. There’s truly no place like it on Earth. But strangely I felt like I had seen it all before.

Maybe it was because I went to The Met’s Barcelona exhibit in May. Maybe it was because the street hustlers, oops, I mean performers, resembled the same types that hustle the crowds near the ferries to the Gray Lady in New York City.

Or maybe my experience at the hostel colored my entire Barcelona visit. I know a nice place to sleep and take showers really makes a difference but what I experienced went beyond those basics to just basic self-control.

On my second day, I moved into a mixed room at Pension Fernando on Calle Ferran.



I met Marion, an Irish woman, and Ryochin, who was traveling through Europe from Japan. It is important to let you know, that Marion had moved into the room only hours before I did, was traveling alone and didn't know anyone there. During our conversation, Marion mentioned she has a boyfriend, Edward, whom she left back in London. She goes as far to ask Ryochin to write their names together in Japanese lettering. Corny but yeah, ok, whatever.

Around 2 a.m., about a half hour after going to sleep, Luke, our Australian roommate, came in ranting about how he bought two 12-packs of Estrella Damm (a Spanish brew) for 12 Euros. (By the way, that is a REALLY good deal.) Good for him. He graciously extended an invitation to drink and smoke hashish in a private room somewhere in the hostel. Then he left. Moments later, Marion got dressed and left too.

The next thing I know, I am awakened by this sort of giggly moan and a very familiar slapping sound. You know the one. Apparently, Luke and Marion drank the beer, did the hash and then each other. More than once.

Where did they do all this you ask? Answer: On the balcony that overlooks busy Calle Ferran off of our six-bed, mixed-gender, shared room.



(We were only on the third floor, so they were seen by drunken passers-by who made comments about what they witnessed.)

The funny part of the story — as if that wasn’t enough — early the next morning Luke was the cause of waking me up yet again. This time, he had packed his bags and was creeping out of the room. If I had been fully awake, I would have realized how sleazy he was when he looked at me and winked.

Several hours later after Marion had rejoined the living she asked a fellow roommate, “Have you seen Luke?”

His reply, “He checked out this morning.”

“But surely he hasn’t left,” she said in her high-brow London-Irish accent.

Roommate’s final reply, “Oh but surely he has.”

What can I say, the highs and lows of hostel living. Now I will retell that story every time someone asks me about Barcelona. I learned the term, “Hostel Whores,” because this kind of thing happens a lot. One guy actually had an empty condom wrapper thrown on him during the actual act that was going on in the bed next to him.

There are other things to be said about how the nature of people changes while traveling but I’ll save it for a time when I am in the mood for a serious analysis into human behavior. For now, I’m going to let that one sink in.