Traveling Times Tales

My last two weeks were spent traveling around Scotland and Ireland with my roommate Wendy and college friend Derek. Blogging about the entire experience sounds daunting, so instead I’ll just share random stories that come to mind over the next few weeks. 

A Memorable Shower

The Shower Story: 

As three near college-age travelers on a budget, most of our accommodations were as cheap as possible. This meant mostly youth hostels. For the most part, youth hostels are great. They’re affordable, centrally located, you get to meet lots of other young travelers and all that jazz. But they also have their downsides. You don’t get your own space and you have to be quite trusting of your neighbors. You also have to be willing to let it all hang out. I learned this first hand in Dublin. 

  In Dublin, our hostel had a shared bathroom. It was about four rooms of varying numbers of beds to one bathroom and two shower rooms. After a long day of travel and several days of not bathing, we decided to turn in early and hit the showers. I chose what I thought to be the only shower room at the time. As I got situated, I realized the door didn’t quite lock. This wouldn’t be a problem if the shower wasn’t right in front of the doorway and concealed by four clear walls. For a moment I considered searching for another shower or trying to make Wendy stand guard, but I was tired & dirty so I went for it anyway. Silly mistake. About halfway through the worst shower of my life (you had to hold a button the entire time you wanted water to come out and the temperature only increased in heat rather than balancing out to luke warm) I heard a girl right outside the door call to her friends, “I’m going to hop in the shower now.” Since I had nearly anticipated this situation, rather than panicking, I pressed the water button, turned to the corner, and gave her the full moon. Sure enough, she opened the door with a scream and ran frantically back to her friends. I hurried along the rest of my shower--conditioner still soaking into my red strands--and listened to the girl retell the story over and over to each of her friends. At one point I heard her say in the retelling, “I don’t even know if it was a boy or a girl.” Great. The genderless nude gets walked in on. Hostels are the best. It’s safe to say I didn’t shower again during my time there.