Hostile? Hostel?

Though I've spent my fair share of time in hostels, 'til now, that time has been in Europe and South America. Though the uninitiated might think sleeping in a room of bunkbeads with grimy foreign tourists would be unpleasant at the best and dangerous at worst, I have found my experiences to be some of the best of my travels. At times, the hostel buddies I've made have been temporary, such as Brid (pronounced Breed), the Irish Engineer my friend Andrew and I befriended in the Galapagos, or long lasting, like my Australian friends Dana and Daniel who I met in Rome and then fortuitously ran across in Nice a week later

I am pleased to report that I am nothing short of a blithering idiot. I had thought perhaps an American hostel would be filled with the same sort of interesting people. Nope. I failed to acount for where I was and the types of people who travel here. Europe and South America get (mostly) cultural tourists, who, no matter how grimy, have a sense of awareness and refinement; that is, except for Americans. I typically shy away from other Americans on my overseas travels because they have no awareness or refinement. They are loud, obnoxious, and inconsiderate and travel for no other reason than it "seemed like something to do." They gloss over cultural sites and center their time around bars and nightlife. I myself have found that bars typically look the same everywhere.

At any rate, Alaska is not a cultural mecca, per se. There are no great monuments or wonders on par with Macchu Picchu or the Eiffel Tower. Alaska is the wilderness. It is rugged. So far, I have discovered a few distinct types in the hostels. First and best are the outdoorsmen: the hikers and kayakers, who have come, reverently, to experience the beauty of the land. Next are the eastern Europeans, who have come for the summer to make as much money as they can before they head home. Last, and by far the most populous, are the Americans. Some are here to work, some because it "seemed like something to do." All are loud, obnoxious, and inconsideate; most are bizarre; many are convicts.

The first hostel I stayed in, I shared a room with a red-headed bear of a man who had latched on at one of the local hotels as a cook. He regaled me with stories of when he was in high school in Indiana, nearly fifteen years earlier. He'd taken the same four classes all four years (home ec, study hall, shop, and gym) because he was a football player. He got a full scholarship to play at Illinois, but within a year he was in jail for hat would turn out to be a four-year-stretch after a fight went wrong. "I spent my 19th birthday in the hole. My 21st too...but I was brewing my own hooch for that one." He also told me about his brother who was a college baseball player before durg use obliterated his mind and he spent the next few years in mental institutions or jails.

My next hostel experience started out quite auspiciously. Among several others in the room was a gregarious North Carolinian. I chatted with him when I first checked in; it turned out he'd been stationed in Bamberg too when he was in the Army. I went out and when I came back that evening he bagan talking to me, ignoring the fact that there were three others trying to sleep in the room. I only just managed to get him quiet and get myself to sleep when door slamming kicked in my PTSD. A group of Aussies had just checked in, apparently after they'd been to the bars, and they had no idea it was nearly midnight. We in our room muttered and cursed as the Aussies yelled to each other in the hall and slammed their room doors every three seconds. Finally tired of having flashbacks of being mortared, I launched from my top bunk and stormed out to the hallway to confront them.

When I opened my room door, I came fact to face with a skeleton of a man with close cropped hair. "What are you lookin' at?" he growled, glaring at me through sunken eyes.

That was it. I snapped. I punched him in the nose and as he staggered back, his hands covering his bloody, broken nose, I kneed him in the groin. He dropped like a stone. "Oy!" Two of his friends came out of their room. I was able to kick the big one in the left knee, the satisfying crunch and his scream letting me know I'd crippled him, but the second one socked me in the side of the head. I reeled for a moment but he wasted his opportunity. He was much smaller than me so I lunged at him, dragging him to the ground. We grappled for a moment before I was able to get on top of him and I battered his face to a pulp. After the last, satisfying "THWACK!", which sent his eyes rolling in the back of his head and knocked him unconscious, I roared.

Or, when I opened my door, I politely asked the skeleton if he wouldn't mind asking his friends not to slam their doors or yell in the hallways. I went back to my bunk and they were nice enough to slam the doors every six seconds instead of every three.

Two nights ago was by far my best. I came in from my first night of work to a gigantic blob of a man sitting on one of the bunks. We exchanged pleasantries as I got myself ready for bed. He asked if it would be okay if he kept the light on. I said that was find but that I'd like it if he didn't slam doors, because it reminded me of mortars. Big Mistake. He launched into a thirty minute diatribe about his vietnam fater who could only see in infrared and had to be "plugged in to a computer to think," how the blob wanted to be in the navy or marines but he'd been to jail a bunch and had been in mental institutions for three years, and how he used to be 375lbs but had gotten down to 220lbs before deciding to get back to 320lbs because he was "wasting away."

Over the course of his rant, he kept mentioning the "secret service", which to him was apparently a covert military group that is comprised of convicts and mental patients, which someday might find a place for him. By the end of it, he'd become incomprehensible because of his profanity and general lack of vocabulary: "I mean, the (f-bomb)-in' (poop), it's like (f-bomb), you know what I mean?" The fact that I'd wrapped my face in a t-shirt, to keep out the light, and was grunting my monosylabbic responses didn't deter him. I was only saved when another roommate walked in. The next morning, I didn't move in my bed until the blob had packed up and left, even though he waited an hour, sitting on his bunk, no doubt waiting to talk at me some more.

I need to find a place to stay.