Brest

Alone in the dark of the basement hallway, I can't help feeling a tad nervous. Perhaps walking several miles to this youth hostel had not been as brilliant a scheme as I had imagined. I had arrived just as the manager was about to shut for the night, at about two minutes to ten. I was glad that I had not dwadled long on my way there. On the other hand there was a real sense that this man was only a few stations away from Grand Central Crazy. He had receding hair and thick glasses, very much in the manner of the quietly insane one. He also talked to me like I was roughly six, though even my six year old self would have found it patronising. If being drunk with power was illegal I would have him immediately breathalysed. The foreboding atmosphere was not helped by the fact that in a hostel capable of sleeping hundreds only five people were staying, including two staff. Because I was told, very patronisingly, to eat my food downstairs, in a kitchen decorated mainly with rules about washing up, I have now ended up here in this pitch black hallway, the lights are timed to go off before you can reach the stairs.


In the TV room it is also dark, lit only by the white glow of the TV. I'm not sure if anyone's there but as I sit down, someone slurps a soft drink disturbingly close by. I watch a French travel competition, called Peking Express, but set in South America. As always people are kicked off on a tense ceremony at the end, apparently because they had not found enough eggs that day. I can't concentrate. The duty manager comes down and whispers goodnight. I flee for my room and lock the door.


The Etap hotel I had stayed in the night before had been souless. To the extent that I had not needed to speak to a single human being in order to stay there. Credit card machine in the hall, code for the door, no-one on my floor. Everything is bolted down to minimize damage possible. That means, as in prison, no loo seat and a toilet moulded into the bathroom wall. I couldn't find the remote until I went to sleep and found it bolted, facing the TV, to the bunk above my head.


The next day the youth hostel proves similarly equipped, no loo seat, push button showers. All the rules make me desperately want to vandalise something but it appears I am unfortunately law-abiding to the core. I have to make do with folding my sheets untidily (Breaking Bedroom Rule 2) and doing a poor job of hoovering my carpet when I leave (In violation of Bedroom Rule 7). At exactly 9.59 the second member of staff, slightly rotund as befits his role as henchman, comes in and asks why I am still here. I indicate the hoover but he tuts and shakes his finger and his head (really) saying that check out is normally at 10.00. When I get downstairs they have my French Youth Hostel Association membership card ready, so I can stay at any of their other establishments across France.