Seeking An Extraordinary Life - A Travel Journal

I sleep pretty well although my room is a little cramped and noisy - there are six of us on bunkbeds in a pretty small room - and come down to dig into the Adelaide Hostel's wonderful free breakfast - there are huge quantities of four different kinds of bagels, croissants, currant bread and some kind of biscuity things, and unlimited tea and coffee.

At ten I meet Andy - a small, nervous-looking Englishman - in the lobby, and he takes me through the job, which consists of making up beds, cleaning mirrors and basins, emptying bins and cleaning the bathrooms. It's pretty good exercise with a lot of tramping up and down stairs but not hard work by any means. We're comfortably finished and enjoying a cuppa by one.

For the rest of the afternoon I do a little shopping for some essentials I'm missing, and explore the local area. We're slap bang in the middle of downtown, convenient for all kinds of shopping from the most expensive stores to very economic ones, as well as many of the city's major attractions.

In the evening I hang out in the lounge, catch up on the blog and get to know a few of the hostel's other residents. Thirty-three beds are currently occupied by a Danish party touring Silicon Valley, who pretty much keep themselves to themselves, but I get on well with many of the other hostellers and there's quite a community of long-timers, working here and elsewhere.

Labels: Adelaide Hostel, San Francisco, Youth Hostel

I sleep late and wake after nine o'clock to find that Deidre has already gone and I'm alone in the hotel room. Combined with the aftershock of yesterday's amazing party and concern about my lost bag I find my mood crashing - I feel completely alone in a foreign city, and that lost feeling, that detachment I've been feeling for so long seems to come crashing down in waves. I shower and pack, and use my remaining time before checkout to call round as many taxi companies as I can, with no luck, which doesn't improve my mood.

I'm out of the room just ahead of the maid, and dump my gear in the lobby to consider my options. My plan is to find a hostel where I can work for my room so I can drastically slow the erosion of my savings and rest up in one place for a while. A realisation is growing on me that the feelings of disconnection and lack of energy I've been feeling are just down to too much change without a break...I haven't stayed in one place for more than a week for almost exactly three months. With a little stability, maybe I can find a bit of peace and centredness, and I can't think of a better city for that purpose.

I start working my way down a hostel list I picked up at the Haight guesthouse. The first few, including the Green Turtle, bring no luck, but when I ring the fourth I am welcomed by a warm female voice. "Adelaide Hostel, Zoe speaking. How may I help you?" I try to speak when she continues "How may I provide excellent service for you today?" I try again but "How can I make your day better?" By now I'm laughing out loud and getting a good feeling about this place. Zoe tells me that there probably is a job available, but I'm best to come over and book in for a night first, as that's how the managers usually like to meet people before employing them.

I arrive, book in and meet Zoe in person - she turns out to be darkhaired, a little gothic with a wide red-lipsticked smile and as warm in person as she sounded on the phone - and I'm told that I've got a good shot at the job but it's down to P.J., one of two Irishmen who own the hostel and who makes the hiring decisions. The hostel is very nice, clean and neat with a big lounge area furnished with huge comfy sofas, a huge kitchen and dining room, free internet and breakfasts thrown in - it couldn't be more perfect. However, when I do meet P.J. he seems doubtful, and tells me he'll need to look over his lists to see if he can fit me in.

I spend the rest of the day on tenterhooks, unable to get on with anything because I don't know where I stand. I get out for a cheap (and pretty nasty) Chinese meal on Powell Street, then come back to mess around on the computers in the evening, still in that state of vacuum. Then, mid-evening, P.J. wanders by the desk with a wad of paper and says, almost as an aside, "Oh, you can start work tomorrow. Meet Andy in the lobby at ten, he'll show you the ropes. You're cleaning rooms."

I'm filled with relief and joy. It suddenly comes home to me how much I've been needing and wanting this chance...somewhere to stop for a while, where I'm not constantly thinking about the next trip, aware that whatever I find and whoever I meet I'll have to leave them behind in days. I have the opportunity to actually live somewhere. I start making lists of the hundred things I want to do in San Francisco, my new home for a little while.

Labels: adelaide hostel, San Francisco, Youth Hostel

I'm still at the Backpacker's Hostel, which has been a really nice place to pause and collect myself. Charlie the manager is great, very attentive and always asking if everything's okay. He runs the hostel with the help of his family, and is always willing to help his guests out, including running out in his car to pick people up from the station, and he's full of recommendations for good places to go and things to see.

Culture shock seems to hit like a series of small strikes to your brain. Each alien thing - the wide flat streets, the pedestrian crossings (crosswalks rather) on the very edge of the junctions, the street signs on lamp-posts, the similar but unfamiliar brands and names - hits with a little jolt, shaking you up just a tiny bit. At first they're exhilarating, waking you up and making you aware and excited.

Then when you get tired (or jetlagged) and homesick, each culture shock makes you feel a little more lost, a little more alone and confused. That's how I ended up feeling the night I arrived at the hostel anyway, and as several friends had recommended it was a relief to put on my earphones, stick on some well-loved MP3s and just be busy (reorganising my pack in this case).

Once I was rested (11 hours) and on top of things the jolts were exciting again. In the morning, since I needed a battery charger, Charlie recommended I go out to Walmart on the other side of town, the only place I'd get one cheaply. There was a bus, but of course I have to squeeze the cents and since I had plenty of time I decided to walk out there (about an hour each way). It turned out to be a really fulfilling trip, giving me a chance to see a lot of the normal streets and activity of the town.

The houses here are almost all wooden and stand up off the ground, with big front porches (often with a swing or couch on them), strangely familiar from dozens of films and TV programs. Everything seems very low and wide, with the impossibly broad and even streets, and almost no buildings over two stories. One of those effects of having more space than you can use, I suppose. The retail park was familiar in layout, although huge, and I wandered in and out of various shops enjoying the little culture shocks - Oh Henry chocolate bars, Lays crisps, the number of people sitting on curbs to talk and eat, the billboards on tall free-standing pylons.

The day was hot and sticky, but I stuck to the shade and moved slowly, beginning to realise why everyone seemed to move at a stroll here, no-one hurrying - if you tried to move quickly in the hot humid atmosphere you immediately became a waterfall of sweat! The air-conditioning in the big stores was heavenly.

Coming back I got a proper chance to meet and chat with a few of my fellow backpackers - Kim from the Netherlands, who was on her way out to travel onwards, and Yohsuke from Japan, with whom I found an instant connection as a fellow Hayao Miyazaki movie fan - we had a great debate over the way anime movies were dubbed and their meanings changed so as not to "confuse" western audiences, really interesting to get the perspective of someone who watches the films in the original Japanese and we shared some mutual indignation over the regular translation of "kami" as "God" (rather than "spirits"), which completely changes the meaning of many anime scenes. Shush, it's important to us.

I talked for a long time with Nam Hyeyoung from Korea, a law student taking 7 weeks abroad before going back to her last semester of studies, and in the evening myself, Yo and Hyeyoung walked up to the falls as the sun was setting, to see them as the big coloured spotlights came up, cutting across the canyon from the huge light arrays in front of one of the hotels and slowly changing through colours and patterns. The wind was coming our way, and the fine mist from the waterfalls was drifting down on us constantly.

Coming back exhausted with my body (still coming over from GMT) screaming for sleep, I came dangerously close to going out again with my two new roommates, both French-speaking (one originally from France, the other born in Quebec) guys who had been living in Israel, who were just getting a wash and change before heading out again to the casino and attempting to score free drinks and some more travel money (although they were fairly resigned to the likelihood of losing their remaining savings instead). Fortunately tiredness (and awareness of my budget) kept me resolute just long enough for me to collapse into bed.

Today I'm re-planning. I've just heard back that the Servas hosts I contacted on Monday have a full house, so I need to re-read my lists and figure out my next step. I'll be staying here one more night, just long enough to get my bearings, then I think I'll try hitching towards Hamilton and/or Toronto. For today I need to get a phone card, maybe send a couple of postcards and try and see a bit more of Niagara before I move on.

Labels: canada, Hostel, Niagara falls, Youth Hostel