Hostel Conditions

Before I begin: I do not have extensive experience in hostels, nor was my experience with Erika exactly indicative of the hostel experience. I have heard rumors of some terrible, terrible places where one needs to sleep with his or her shoes on, and your wallet in tucked into your underwear.

That said, I don't know what everyone is so concerned about with hostels. To save money on our trip to London, Erika and I stayed in a hostel about forty minutes outside of central London in a neighborhood called Acton Town (or Acton). The Windmill was mostly a pub. Situated on the corner of an extremely ethnic community (meaning that there were a variety of ethnicities; I think Erika summed it up best: you don't hear a lot of English accents around here). For those familiar with London, Acton is right on the border of Zone 2 and Zone 3. An all day Tube pass for two people from Zone 3 to Zone 1 costs around 14 pounds. This is pertinant information when considering the cost of the stay: a double bed room cost $23 per person per night, or roughly $96 for the entire stay. This was a private room, with a shared bathroom.

Granted, we definitely got what we paid for. The carpet in the room was threadbare at best, and at worst, there was an iron shaped burn on the carpet where someone failed to iron a shirt correctly. The bed was a cheap frame with not the nicest of mattresses on it. But, it was clean, the sheets were washed before we got there, and it was quiet (which is something that not a lot of hostels can boast).

The bathrooms left a little to be desired, and one morning there was quite a backup. But these allowed for moments to meet new people. The first day, Erika had a broken conversation with an Italian woman waiting to shower. The next day, I had a pleasant conversation with a German guy, about our age. Knowing a little German was a nice trick here, and he was impressed that, as an American, I could speak a foreign language. Inside, the bathroom were boarder line deplorable. The tub had no curtain, and no shower. There was a detached head that you held and, as you squatted in the tub, ran over you. Because most people ended up shooting water into the bathroom, as I did (and am sure Erika did as well), the linoleum had swelled, bubbled, and in places, separated entirely from the floor. This gave the floor an unnatural squishy feeling that was at once pleasant and horrifying. The toilet room was little more than a closet with a window that was surprisingly open for how low to the ground it felt. The locks on both left a lot to be desired, and when Erika had to pee late at night, I was recruited to stand guard (a good practice when staying in places like this anyways).

Another fun fact I learned while at the hostel: London has some huge bees. To air the room out, Erika opened the window which didn't have a screen, and we went down to eat at the pub. Once we got back, as we were about to nod off for a nap before hitting the town, we heard what I thought was someone's cell phone on vibrate left on a rickety table. We investigated the window to find a bee the size of a quarter trying to fly out the closed window and protesting greatly. It didn't seem to realize that it was stronger than both of us and could overpower a better part of the hostel with little resistance, so it remained trapped between the curtain and the window frame. We left it there for a while, hoping that it would fly out on it's own volition, as we tried in vain to sleep again. After a few fruitless minutes of nervous tossing, Erika and I corralled the beast out the open window using a Tuper-ware lid and sheer will power. We never opened that window again.

Despite all of these drawbacks, I would stay at this hostel again without question. The people there really made the experience. It is run by an older Irish woman who seems to live in the bar and carries herself with a stern determination that both Erika and I mistook for disapproval. Erika, whose mother is Guatemalan and whose father is Irish, was a little worried that her Latina appearance might raise some eyebrows. Luckily, she was one drop in a pool of unrecognizable ethnicities that lives in Acton. Nonetheless, as she handed the woman her card, she looked at the card for a moment, and then at Erika. Then back at the card.
"Doyle?" The woman said, not cracking a smile, seemingly glaring at Erika over her glasses.
"Yeah..." Erika said, nervously.
She looked back at the card, and then at Erika.
"Where did you get that name?"
"Oh. Um...my Dad is Irish."
At this the woman perked up.
"Oh? From where?"
At this moment, an argument I had been making with Erika became clear to her. See: in America no one identifies him or herself as American. Instead, as a country of immigrants, everyone identifies him- or herself as their lineage. For instance, Erika constantly tells people that she is half Guatemalan, half Irish. While this might be true on some cultural level, she is really American. Just like I am (though, often times I tell people that I am Irish, when I am stateside). In America, this is how people explain idiosyncrasies, like Erika's taste for Latin food, and her inability to show up on time: these are all because she is Guatemalan. Here, though, she is American. And when I stressed against claiming to be Irish here, Erika thought I was trying to deny her heritage.
When Erika made the claimed that her father was Irish (i.e. from Ireland), this woman rightfully thought that Erika's father had come over to America from Ireland, and that Erika was essentially a first generation Irish-Guatemalan-American. This is not the case, and Erika was stuck having to explain that her father, an American, did not reveal where his lineage had originally come from generations ago, when some number of great-grandfather or mother came overseas.
The woman was crestfallen because Doyle as a popular name in her part of Ireland (the part she actually came from in her life time), and there may have been a chance that she knew her parents.
When we got back to the room, Erika said, "Oh....I get what you mean now. I am American, because the real Irish people are actually closer over here."

Despite this initial confusion, the woman was really rather pleasant. She struck up a conversation with us, told us where we should go if we visited Ireland and was pleased to see us for the shorter trip the second time we came through.

Beside her, the bar staff was really friendly. Erika spoke Spanish with the bar girl who was actually from Spain. The bar regulars were pretty nice, as well. When we got there, Erika had bought along my guitar from home. As we crossed the bar to go upstairs, an older gentleman at the bar yelled, "Hey! Can you play that thing?"
No, I thought, I just like to carry the case around. It goes well with my shoes.
Being polite, I said I did, and he asked that I bring it back down when we came back to order food. I played a small set for a few regulars in the bar on a Friday afternoon. They were very appreciative, and used the opportunity to spin yarns, tell tales, and do other cliched things that older Irish men tend to do. Had he a walking stick, a pipe and a wool sweater, I might have mistaken myself for being in the Gaelic country side, and not a busy corner in London.

Again, this hostel was far from ordinary, at least as far as some stories I have heard. It was, though, hostel, hotel or guest house, a really nice stay. I don't know if any of my loyal readers are going to be in London any time soon, but if you are looking for a good hostel to stay at that is close to central London (the Tube got us there in under a half hour), cheap, clean(ish) and friendly, then one could do worse than The Windmill.