Things You Should Know Before Staying in a Matratzenlager
- It is possible you will share a room with 40 people you have never seen before in your life. Heck, you might even share the same sleeping surface with 10 people you have never seen before in you life. Mentally prepare yourself for this in advance, but rejoice when you discover the establishment is only 30% full.
- There’s a chance the hot chocolate will cost €3 and will taste a lot like warm water.
- Find an English speaker, even if you embarrass yourself in the process, and ask them what time dinner is served because after backpacking 8 miles, you’ll be glad for a meal. However, understand that food must be airlifted into this remote location, which could translate into some “special time” in the toilet later on in the evening.
- And speaking of toilets: it will be cold in there because the window is somehow always open no matter how many times you close it. Share this information with your backside in advance because sitting down will be startling.
- Unless you are lucky enough to score a double room, you will have absolutely no alone time while staying in the establishment. And if you are like me and Jason, after a full day on the trail, all you will want is to rest in a secure location for a couple hours before dinner and then retreat there immediately after you eat and go straight to bed—you know, at the really late hour of 7:30 p.m. But instead, you will most likely be in a 40-person room, and taking a nap in a 40-person room at 4:30 in the afternoon is a bit uncomfortable, and if you go to bed at 7:30 p.m., you might as well write the word LOSER on a piece of paper and tape that to your head as you sleep. And it doesn’t even matter what language the other guests speak because they all know what that word means and they will think you are one even without the sign, so why not be bold about it.
- You will see people naked or at least partially naked and most likely they will be older than you and will have no qualms about being naked because they have been alive for almost seven decades and just don’t give a shit anymore. For example, I saw one dude who was pushing 70 STRIDING across the room in nothing but his black briefs and a tank top (I would call it a wife-beater, but he was European and I’m just not sure the term works for a European like it works for an American), and then he walked down the hall and THEN WALKED DOWN THE STAIRS because why put clothes on to visit a cold effin’ toilet in a cold effin’ Matratzenlager around a bunch of people who have never seen you in your underwear before? But because I was staring, I knew the answer to that question. You see, I was not staring in horror; I was staring in a state of Hot Damn because, seriously, if I was 70 years old and had legs like that, I’d be walking around in nothing but my underwear too. Hell, if I was 33 years old and had those legs, I’d be in little but my underwear most days. But alas, there is this thing in my life called cellulite, and all I have to say about that is Where are my pants?
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