Weird Hostels, Hangovers, and the Countryside

Welcome back.

Writing to you from a hammock in the mountains, recovering from a two-day hangover. Ever since I turned 25, all hangovers have been two days…

Last we spoke, I was heading south to a beach/party city to stay in my first hostel of the trip.

In the past eight days, I drove the entire coast of the country, with plenty of stories, and mistakes, to share.

Before I start embarrassing myself, feel free to send this newsletter to anyone who would find it entertaining: friends, family, hungover 25-year-olds, really. And if you're reading this but not subscribed, here you go…

Okay. Let’s begin

Hostels. If you've stayed in them, you know what to expect.

The last hostel I stayed in was in Dublin during study abroad on Saint Patrick's Day. Within five minutes of being there, the guy bunking above me was clipping his toenails in bed.

Up to this point, I'd spent the trip in guesthouses or Airbnbs, with my own room, with a lock, private bathroom, with a lock, and not a lot of booze.

Solo traveling usually involves meeting other travelers. Before I left, this was probably my number one anxiety of the trip.

Because you can't plan to spontaneously meet people. Oh yeah, I'll run into a super cool dude on Wednesday in two weeks at a bar!

I imagined if I was alone for two seconds abroad, I'd feel lonely, fall into a deep depression, and fly back to Seattle.

I haven't been ALONE ALONE in years. In high school and college, I was surrounded by people, and everywhere I've moved post-grad, I've had friends, family, or partners close by.

Of course I've felt alone plenty of times in my life, as you can in a busy city, or even surrounded by loved ones, but actually been alone, not for a long time.

When was the last time you were really alone?

But I've been having a wonderful time. Enjoying my own company more than expected, eating on my own schedule, doing what I want when I want, no pressure to check in with anyone (besides my mom, who is still worried sick about those cigarettes from the last newsletter).

But I obviously need to stay in some shitty hostels and meet people. So that's what I did last Saturday night.

The night before, I was invited into a groupchat with the other people staying at my hostel - anyone who booked through the HostelWorld app.

I took a look at profiles and had high hopes.

After a 3-ish hour drive, and hitting the rental car into a rock, I arrived.

As I approached the hostel door, a man sitting at the cafe next door said, "Hey, Kevin?"

He was a larger dude in a heavy jacket, beanie, and sunglasses. It was like 70 degrees out.

"I'm the owner, Toni."

Nice.

He took me upstairs to the “hostel”, which was actually a two-bedroom apartment with three sets of bunk beds in each room. He told me to take one of the bottom beds.

The bed next to me had a pink towel and Hello Kitty sleep mask on it.

I went for a walk and stumbled onto a random beach where nobody was. Laying in the sun, my phone buzzed.

A British girl in the hostel chat, asking if I wanted to go to a castle.

“Sure!”

She said her and the other people were sitting out on the balcony.

I walked back, went into my room (now reeking of cigs) and saw a smoke trail leading out to the balcony.

I met the British girl, Alanna, smoking, and an American 19-year-old named Yoony.

Both chill, although Alanna was talking my ear off. She said we were in the same room. No comment.

Soon after, a super fucked-up-looking guy came out. (not to be rude, but you’d think the same if you saw him)

Older, stained shirt, stained sweatpants, wrinkles under his eyebags. He introduced himself as Paul and I shook his sweaty hand.

I asked how he was doing, and he said, "Hungover and a little drunk," before lighting a cig.

Turns out he was 41, had been living in the hostel "on and off" for a month, and was from Oregon. But also lived in Panama.

All in all, a sketchy character.

We headed to the castle. I drove since I was the only one with a car, and we met another character, Dan from Australia, outside. Dan was Yoony's friend from a previous hostel.

Paul promised he knew the way and we didn't need directions.

He proceeded to direct me into two or three wrong turns, dead ends, and oncoming traffic, until I pulled up Google Maps and he said, "Yeah, I usually walk around here."

The moment we arrived at the castle, Paul lit a cig and disappeared. The rest of us chilled and watched sunset.

Driving back to our hostel, an Albanian police car pulled up behind me and honked multiple times for not being aggressive enough merging into high-speed traffic on blind turns.

I jokingly said, "We're on the run from the cops!" and Paul quickly replied, "I'm on the run. You guys aren't."

I 100% believe him.

We got back to the hostel and met the final two characters, Kaz and Georgia, a couple (or so I thought) from Britain and Australia.

They were cooking, playing music, and being affectionate.

Turns out they'd met two days prior, both as solo travelers, and Georgia had a boyfriend in Switzerland. I'm not sure if Kaz knew.

We spent a few hours on the deck all drinking together. Hostels are special in the way that everyone feels comfortable around each other almost immediately.

Around 11pm, Kaz and Georgia started blasting music and the neighbor came out to tell us to turn it down. I told them to turn it down, and they did, by about half a notch.

The neighbor came back. They turned it down more, before turning it back up minutes later. Annoying.

Alanna, Dan, Yoony, and I had gotten into a discussion about AI.

I was talking about how I started paying $100/mo for Claude Max and it was worth every penny.

Alanna was diehard against AI, she said she hated it and would never use it. To each their own.

Dan, on the contrary, was strangely way too pro-AI. He was arguing, red in the face, telling her she'd never get a job and didn't understand it.

He got so pissed that he actually left the hostel. Chill bro.

My favorite thing to do with strangers, especially ones who are weirder, is go along with everything they say.

You can get crazy shit out of people, very quickly, if you just nod along, don't judge, and don't push back.

I've deployed this strategy around the world. At parties, with dentists, you name it.

Once, at the beginning of COVID, a neighbor told me the whole thing was made up in a research lab in China and leaked into the US. After a few more nods, she got into how the moon was actually a ship or a database or something.

The COVID thing turned out to be true, and I haven't looked at the moon the same way since…

Annoyed at the loud music, and with one of the more sane people gone, I announced I was going for a walk.

Alanna asked how long I'd be gone. I thought, that's weird, and told her probably 45 minutes.

She said she was going to stay up so she wouldn't wake me when she was packing? That made no sense, but I had a feeling she had ulterior motives.

I walked, listened to music, replied to folks who commented on my last newsletter, and appreciated some alone time.

I got back, and Alanna was still out on the deck alone and invited me out. I said I had to brush my teeth.

I was dead tired and wanted more than anything to go to bed.

The next two hours were a battle.

Alanna has a lisp, which I have no problem with, but it helps paint the visual. It added another layer to what was about to happen.

It was her last night in Albania, heading back to the UK early the next morning, and she proceeded to chat my ear off for two hours.

What about, I'm not even sure, because all I was thinking was, how do I get her to stop?

I pulled out all the stops. Dumbed my responses down to "Yeah" and "That's crazy."

I walked over and turned the overhead light off, then she turned her PHONE FLASHLIGHT ON.

I grabbed my Kindle and said, "Gonna read for a bit," to try and hint.

I even put my massive night retainer in and said, "Gotta put my retainer in to sleep" but she continued until I just stopped responding and acted asleep. A tactic I haven’t used since I was six.

I was woken up at 7:30am to an alarm, only for a few rings.

Because she snoozed it.

Woke up again at 7:45 to another one, and was kept up for the next 20 minutes, for what I assume was her audition at loudest morning packing world record.

I can’t stand people who snooze alarms. On principle. Set the alarm for when you need to get up, and get up. Setting 4 alarms is a sign of weakness.

First hostel night was entertaining and not how I expected.

The next day, slightly hungover, I hung out with Yoony and Dan, hacky-sacked on the beach, then hit the road late in the afternoon.

I couldn’t have been happier to be alone again.

I stopped for dinner two hours up the coast at a pizza place on the side of the highway.

The waiter was a ten-year-old kid, the only English speaker in the family who ran the place.

I asked how he learned and he said, "MrBeast on YouTube." Which is awesome.

I had a fire pizza and a glass of vino (the only appropriate alcohol for a Sunday night).

The vibes were so good I asked the kid if they had any rooms available. I'd seen a guesthouse-looking building on the property.

He said yes, and I took it, eating a $20 cancellation fee on a place I had booked earlier, further up the coast.

After dinner, I went on a walk and stumbled into a random small market. I asked if they had a glass of red wine. Language barrier, but we finally got each other, and we kinda did.

He brought me an entire plastic bottle full of homebrewed red wine, and I sat there and drank a glass.

The owner was playing mobile games on full blast. Another guy was scrolling TikTok on full blast while smoking. The last guy was rolling a cigarette, watching a TV with a soccer game that had been buffering for four minutes. It was epic.

The next day I reached the place I'd originally booked.

Terrible vibes immediately.

Touristy town, off-season, half the stores closed. My guesthouse was way out of the way, and stationed right outside my door was an American volunteer, probably 50 years old.

Every time I came and went, she'd ask where I was going and greet me when I came back. Within ten minutes, I emailed the owners and told them I wouldn't be staying the next night.

Lesson learned: do not book more than one night in advance.

Back on the road, with a notable stop at a coffee shop where I had my first battle with a squat-and-spray toilet. I've used these before, but can't really remember when.

No TP, just a sprayer, and if you're like me, that morning coffee is like clockwork.

Successful operation, but I left the bathroom soaking wet from the waist down. Nothing to dry with.

Conveniently, I was commando (laundry ain't easy to come by), so the water soaked right through the shorts.

I shuffled past the cafe owner and the other patrons drinking hard liquor at 9:30am as discreetly as I could, hoping they were too drunk to see, or drunk enough to find it hilarious.

I arrived in Berat later that afternoon with nothing booked. I walked around until I stumbled on a cute-looking spot overlooking the river.

I rang a bell at the empty front desk until I heard a "hey" from a window above me.

"Hey, do you guys have any rooms tonight?"

"One second."

The woman appeared and told me she had one. I booked two nights off the jump, and ended up extending to a third.

She even did my laundry. Everything shrank about half a size and smells like turmeric now.

She also said I reminded her of her son, which got me thinking about how powerful traveling young is.

Being a 25-year-old guy, especially in Albania where I look more like 19 because I don't chain-smoke, is a hack.

You can look like an idiot and people will laugh along with you. You don't have to take yourself seriously, which is an amazing tool when traveling with language barriers.

Younger boys will think you're cool, older folks will remind you of their kids, same age locals will want to hang out.

You can do grown-up shit AND young stupid shit, and nobody bats an eye.

And it's not just here. At 25, back home, you can really swing for the fences. People are moving to New York without jobs for fun. Quitting their jobs to do random shit. Moving to Orcas Island to … (story for another time).

If you're young, act like it! If you’re old… you’re never old.

Then it was Friday, and once again time for another hostel.

I booked one two hours north, literally called a "party hostel," this time with a private room. Soft, I know.

I rang the doorbell and was greeted by a bald guy with 20 piercings. He walked me to the front desk and yelled someone's name.

A girl blew a huge vape cloud, got off the couch, walked over, and asked for my passport.

The bald guy gave me a tour, and everyone was sleeping with each other for sure.

I was one of two guests that night. The other 12ish people were all volunteers there. And the only other guest had volunteered there last summer. So I thought they might eat me or something.

We went to a local spot and the front desk vape girl immediately ordered 10 shots of raki right after we all ordered drinks.

We ate, got another complimentary round of shots on the restaurant, went back, played drinking games, then went out to a bar and proceeded to get wasted.

There was a lot of "yeah, I was gonna do this, but then this happened" with the volunteers.

Kinda like "I would've gone D1 if it wasn't for my ACL."

I woke up at 7am with a throbbing headache, nausea, and a fiery urge to go far, far away.

I packed my shit, got in the car, and drove 3.5 hours to way north Albania.

The drive was equally beautiful as it was scary. Two-lane road with blind turns, no lines, and random cattle in the road when you least expect it.

I stayed here last night and am here tonight, then starting back south tomorrow. It's a cool mountain village with lots of hiking.

That's about it for this week.

This one was more straightforward, which I'll partially blame on the hangover.

I'm considering doing 2 of these per week so I can focus more on the random funny stories and shorten the emails up.

I also don't want you guys to become desensitized to my name in your inbox. I want it to be an enjoyable thing when these show up.

So let me know if you'd prefer two shorter ones per week or one longer one.

As always, thank you so much for tuning in. I hope you're able to laugh at me, relate, or just be entertained for a few minutes.

Until next time,

KB

(P.S. I also submitted an audition for Survivor, so please keep your fingers crossed 🙏 )