Foreign Bathroom Series, Chapter 5: Dutch Hostel

Names have been modified to protect the innocent (also, embarrassed).

 

The restroom situation at a hostel is always a gamble. One friend of mine told me of a trip to Singapore involving a hostel with a mixed gender toilet and shower room. He was mortified. Then again, other countries and places offer great privacy and comfort. Think of it as toilet roulette.

I was traveling with a dear friend. Let’s call him JJ. We met up at Schiphol airport in Amsterdam to do a rapid-fire, two-day, whirlwind, nonstop, café to café, coffee tour of the area. In under 18 hours, we drank cappuccino after cappuccino in western Europe, covering 45 miles of the Netherlands. Our coffee excursion included the best cafes in the Netherlands, culminating in our seventh coffee bar in the hip college town of Utrecht. We drank and talked for hours, bouncing from hip spot to cobblestone street and onto the next slinger of the black juice of life. Until finally, our hearts could no longer handle anymore caffeine and our bladders howled with the strain of frequent emptying.

We had decided on a hostel for the night. And after some clumsy navigational errors, we stepped into a tight townhome with a classic youth hostel vibe. Guitars hung on the walls, collegiate hipsters lounged with oversized headphones, and the whole placed smelled of marijuana. We arranged to stay the night in one of the many bunk beds on the top floor. We climbed and climbed. With six (!) sets of spiral stairs now underneath us, I poked around and found our room. It was a sprawling empty area with no less than twenty bunks. Each bunk was the classic metal-frame bed with thin plastic mattresses, half of them permanently stained. It would have to do—although JJ was on the fence. With no bag lockers, we would have to take our bags with us to dinner—unless we wanted to graciously donate our belongings to a patchouli-smelling backpacker.

On our way out, we saw the bathroom. It was a single door labeled toilets and showers. Setting his bag on the floor, JJ said, “I’m just going to use the restroom quick.”

He pushed the door open.

“Oh,” he balked with a start, “I’m sorry!”

“It’s okay! No worries,” said a clearly female voice from within the bathroom.

JJ closed the door, turned his beet-red face to me and said, “there’s a girl in there. And she’s not dressed.”

Group restroom. Group toilets. Group shower. Zero privacy. This is not uncommon in Europe.

That was the proverbial straw on the proverbial camel’s back. We collected a refund on our night and took the train back to Amsterdam. Hotels have nicer bathrooms anyway.

anthony forrest