Pattern 91: Traveler's Inn

Hostels were somewhat of a new experience for me. I’ve slept in bunk houses before but never with people I haven’t met. In case the concept escapes some people, hostels are like hotels but instead of renting a room, individual beds are rented. In the sparsest hostels, a bed is truly all that’s rented and facilities like linens, towels, and food are up to the visitor. Many hostels however are franchised and offer many amenities like bike tours, breakfast buffets, and lounges.

Over the course of traveling, I just about ran the gamut of hostels. In Ireland, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, and Hamburg I stayed at a specific hostel chain that always has very nice facilities with almost anything you could ask for available. This was all well and good but compared to some of the smaller places I stayed at, that hostel came up short on some specific characteristics that Alexander considers vital to the traveler’s inn.

“Make the traveler’s inn a place where travelers can take rooms for the night, but where – unlike most hotels and motels – the Inn draws all its energy from the community of travelers that are there any given evening. The scale is small – 30 or 40 guests to an inn; meals are offered communally; there is even a large space ringed round with beds in alcoves.”

No hostel that I stayed in matched this pattern exactly but a few met the spirit of it. In mid-March, a few friends and I got stranded late in Rotterdam on our way home from Amsterdam. We managed to find a nearby hostel that was about to close but stayed open to allow us to check-in. Unfortunately, we had to make it back to Brussels in the morning otherwise, I would have loved to stay there another night. Every hostel wants to encourage socializing between visitors but this Rotterdam hostel was especially suited to it.

The architectural details of a successful hostel can be hard to notice. In Rotterdam, most of the charm could be felt from the hosts and the scale of the enterprise. It was clear that the owners of the hostel were fully invested in making our stay feel like home while not aggressively asserting the idea. There was a communal kitchen to one side of the main lounge area that was open to the rest of the room which was filled with a large dining table and comfortable seating.

The other hostel that comes to mind is one I stayed at on a solo trip to Bratislava, Slovakia. This one was similarly as small as the Rotterdam hostel and but went a step further. The Bratislava hostel was honestly a bit of a dump architecturally. Located up a non-descript flight of stairs, past the Thai Massage business was a collection of rooms that housed about twenty people, staff and guests. The kitchen was off in its own isolated room and the office was in the lounge which created an uneasy competition for space. The one thing that this hostel did well however was encourage socialization and community.

As a rule, groups of more than four weren’t allowed which makes a big difference in sociability and true communal meals were offered every night. Many hostels have a communal kitchen for people to use but this one actually made a meal every night for everyone staying there. After my stay, I was encouraged to leave a drawing or sentiment on the wall which was covered in comments and artwork left by past guests. Leaving a physical mark that will encourage others to do the same made me feel like a part of a community. Alexander makes the key observation;

“…the people who run the place themselves live there and treat the entire inn as their household”.