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Remember that AT&T commercial about a guy who was stuck in a youth hostel with Slad and Veter, the Techno Twins? Well now I’ve lived it…I just got back from a conference in San Diego, and I stayed in a hostel instead of a hotel. There were 5 of us old fogies from the lab and the rest of the place was filled with PT students and backpackers from around the world. I met a bona-fide Techno Twin…Joel, a kid from Sweden who makes a living by organizing raves in Europe. He called it a “club” (as in a nightclub) but from what I gathered, the club only has a physical manifestation now and then…it mainly exists as a group on Facebook. Joel hires the DJ and makes all the arrangements, people show up and party all night, and Joel pockets the proceeds. He spends about 3 months of the year travelling around the world, taking in the party scene. We pulled up our respective homes on Google Earth (his was in Stockholm) and talked about our wildy divergent lifestyles. I told him that I was wired for solitude instead of socialization. He said he can’t be out clubbing every night either…it makes him a little crazy. I told him I’m pretty confident I wouldn’t like going to a rave…he said “have you ever tried it?”…I said “No” and he broke out laughing. He said “That’s like a 16 year old kid saying they don’t like fish when they’ve never tried it.” Point taken, Joel. Happy travels.

One of the hostel employees was Friendly Mike…half German, half-Iraqi, with a warm heart like a Southern grandma and a face like Corporal Klinger. Most of the employees lived rent-free at the hostel in exchange for staffing the front desk. Mike worked the graveyard shift and was just as buoyant at 4 a.m. as at noon. He was probably older than me and had lived quite a life…childhood in Germany, then moved to Iraq after his parents split up. He had to go through compulsory military service in the Iraqi army, but got out of the country as soon as his dad passed away. Now he parties till the wee hours and comes home in his clubbing clothes to begin his shift, still 3 sheets to the wind. He’s an infectiously happy drunk…and infectiously happy when he’s sober too.

The hostel was in a beautiful old hotel built in 1887. Two Italian restaurants occupy the 1st floor and the hostel is on floors 2 and 3. It’s centered around a beautiful staircase beneath a skylight…the rooms open into a central atrium and a balcony circles the third floor. I loved all the natural light.

I roomed with 2 other gals from the lab and a girl from the UK joined us on the final night. I figured I’d be woken up by noisy partygoers stumbling home…but everyone respected the quiet hours from 11 p.m. onward. Anybody who wanted to “keep the dream alive” late night did so in the Party Room…a lounge with leather sofas, funky artwork and a view of the street below. I figured the co-ed communal bathrooms would be creepy, but they were fine…each shower and toilet stall was in its own little room with a lock. The whole place was sparkling clean. Each morning I padded down to the communal kitchen to eat free oatmeal and pancakes…the hostel provided the ingredients and everyone cooked what they wanted.

The staff gave me directions up to Balboa Park…I spent an afternoon walking around it when I couldn’t stand the traffic and people anymore. Here’s the Botanical House…when I say I’d like to have a greenhouse someday, this is what I have in mind!

I must’ve walked 8 miles that day…I wanted to soak up as much 70-degree air as I could. The whole town is full of Bird of Paradise plants…they use them for groundcover the way we would use hostas.

Yes, I did attend the conference too, but you don’t want to hear about that. Here’s the style of windows at the convention center, though. I called it “the narthex of the Death Star”.

I get to go back to SD in October for another conference, and I’ll definitely stay at the hostel. It was cheap and cheerful and way more interesting than a hotel. For 28 bucks a night, I can deal with bunk beds and partygoing twenty-something kids. And with the free breakfast and the thoughfulness of the staff, I felt like I was a guest at someone’s home…someone absolutely crazy, sure, but friendly as it gets.

-shauna-