If you’re on a severely limited budget, or if you like hanging out with pri-marily youthful backpackers, you may want to stay in a hostel. They used to be called youth hostels,but the only ones that still follow the under-26-only rule are in southern Germany. Most hostels are now open as cheap digs for travelers of all ages, with nightly rates ranging from
$15 to $40 per person.
Some are affiliated with the official hostel organization, Hostelling International (or IYH, as it’s known abroad), which means they have to live up to a certain set of standards. Increasingly, private, unaffiliated hostels are opening up (often closer to the center of town than the offi-cial hostel), and although they may not have the IYH stamp of approval, in some cases they’re actually nicer joints (by the same token, they may also be squalid dumps).
In a hostel, you stay in bunks in shared, dormlike rooms — though increasingly hostels are offering private rooms sleeping two to four people as well. You find anywhere from 4 to 8 beds per room (the cur-rent trend) to as many as 100 beds in one big gymnasium-like space (this sort of arrangement is slowly disappearing); most hostels have a mix of different-sized rooms at varying prices. Families can often find hostels with four-bunk rooms. Many hostels separate the sexes into different rooms or floors and supply lockers for safe bag storage. Bathrooms are usually shared (but this, too, is changing as more private rooms are made available), breakfast is often included, and other cheap but school cafeteria–like meals may be available.
Hostels (especially the official IYH ones) are often far from the city center, occasionally on the outskirts of town, and they fill up with high-school students in the summer. Year-round, many seem to be little more than giant backpacker singles’ bars — great for meeting your fellow trav-elers, but terrible for getting to know the local city and culture.
Almost all hostels impose evening curfews (usually between 10 p.m. and midnight), midday lockout periods, and length-of-stay limits (often a maximum of three days). You may only be able to make reservations one day ahead of time, or not at all, so be sure to show up early.
To stay in many “official” IYH hostels — or at least to get a discount — you must be a card-carrying member of Hostelling International,8401 Colesville Rd., Suite 600, Silver Springs, MD 20910 (
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301-495-1240;www.hiusa.orgfor the U.S. site and joining; www.hihostels.comfor the international site). Membership is free for people under 18, $28 per year for people ages 18 to 54, and $18 for those 55 and older. You can also buy the card at many hostels abroad. You can find hostel listings on Hostelling International’s Web site (www.hihostels.com) and at the private sites www.hostels.com, www.hostels.net, and www.europe hostels.org.
Most hostels furnish a blanket but require you to have your own sleep-sack, which is basically a sleeping bag made out of a sheet. If you plan to stay in hostels on your trip, before you leave buy one (from Hostelling International) or make one (fold a sheet in half and sew it closed across the bottom and halfway up the side). Some hostels sell sleep-sacks, and a few insist that you rent one of theirs.
In addition to hostels, several other options exist for low-budget lodging (ask for details at the tourism office):
Convents:Especially in predominantly Catholic countries such as Italy, Spain, and France, staying in convents and other religious buildings enables you to save a lot of money and get an immaculate and safe room, no matter what your religious affiliation. Rooms in convents, available in many major cities and pilgrimage sites, cost as little as $5 to as much as $250 per night — though the latter is a bit of an exception; they’re usually pretty cheap, and well under
$100 in most cases. Your room probably won’t be any fancier than the cells that the nuns or monks occupy, but a few are quite posh.
Many convents do give preference to visitors of their own denomi-nation or from that religious order’s country of origin.
University housing:During the summer when school is not in ses-sion, checking with local universities to see whether any unused dorm rooms are for rent (at rates comparable to hostels) can be worthwhile.
Tent cities:Some cities (including Munich, London, Paris, Venice, and Copenhagen) have hangarlike rooms or large tents open at the height of the summer season for travelers on an extremely tight budget. For anywhere from $7 to $20, you get a floor mat and a blanket, more than 100 roommates, and a cup of tea in the morning.
Most of the people at these giant slumber parties are students, but the tent cities are open to everyone. Essentially, this is one step above sleeping on a park bench (which, by the way, is dangerous, not recommended, and usually illegal).
If you use any type of shared-space lodging, such as hostels or tent cities, be very careful with your belongings. Always play it safe; leave your pack in the lockers (if you’re staying in a hostel) or at the train sta-tion (if you’re staying in another type of communal lodging). For safety tips on overnight trains, see Chapter 9.