Party Hostel

Mexico City, Mexico

The Lobby

An overnight bus and a cab ride later I found myself in the madhouse that is the lobby of Hostel Mundo Joven Catedral. In stark contrast to my hostel in Valles where I'd had two dorm rooms entirely to myself, here I found dozens of guests, restaurant patrons, and uniformed hostel employees.

Of the uniformed hostel employees, only one was working at the desk, trying to service three different guests at once. With a smile he informed me that I would not be able to check in for four and a half hours. He also gave me a slip of paper with a code good for 1 GB of Wifi. Rationed Wifi? This was a first for me.

I went into the attached café to set up shop on my laptop. After a few minutes a waiter came by and told me that I couldn't be there as the café was only for customers. I tried to order a coffee and he reiterated that I had to move. Ugh.

I found a chair in the lobby near the front desk and started working to get a Tomcat server with a hello world application deployed to AWS. I struggled with this for a few hours a in fog of sleep deprivation and general disgruntleness.

At some point an energetic French man with long hair and a short beard approached me looking for an iPhone charger. I let him use mine and he proceeded to tell me about this huge band playing upstairs in the bar that night. Really he only told me of their hugeness and that I had to go. He said he'd buy me a drink for letting him borrow my charger. Also he called me "bro." Yuck.

The Laundry Room

At the front desk I paid $5 for a small bag of liquid soap and two tokens for the washer and dryer. Which if you ask me is quite a lot for laundry you're going to do yourself.

Finding the laundry room turned out to be an adventure. On the fifth floor of the hostel there was a sign for Laundry with an arrow pointing down the hall. But there was no laundry room. I took the stairs up to the 6th floor and was met by a security guy. He wanted my ID and I told him I was looking for the laundry room. No, es el bar.

So I went back down to the 5th floor and asked some folks eating dinner for help. Turns out one of them knew a guy who had done laundry at the hostel, and he said the laundry room was on the 6th floor. Take a right at the security guy.

This time I responded to the security guy by pointing past him to the right where I found a door that opened into a room completely full of hostel supplies. Stacks of towels, sheets, and discarded appliances reached to the ceiling, leaving only enough room for the door to open. In the middle of the stacks were a washer and dryer.

The Bar

On the rooftop bar I received my free shot of mezcal in a dinky plastic cup. I also bought a 50 peso Modelo, which is pretty pricey for a bar beer in Mexico.

The huge band turned out to be a DJ playing a mix of old and new pop songs, especially Despacito. I saw annoying French bro impressing some 20-somethings with his hipness and wasn't tempted to ask for the drink he'd promised me. The crowd was mostly young European and American tourists in club getup hanging out in 2s and 3s. I drank my beer by myself at the railing of the rooftop, looking out over the city.

I didn't have much stomach for the hostel bar, but after a couple of drinks I felt like a couple more. So I wandered out of the hostel in search of a bar more to my liking. I ended up on a different rooftop a few blocks away, drinking a watered-down martini and reading a book.

The Room

I had booked 8 nights in a dorm room.

The beds were steel bunk beds 6 feet long, which is just long enough for my feet to dangle off. Rolling over to your other side shook the entire bed frame, and if god forbid the person on the top had to climb down to use the bathroom, it would take an act of god or a 10-drink drunk to sleep through it. Lesson learned #2 - prefer wooden bunk beds to steel bunk beds.

There was also the issue of the staircase. All the rooms in the 6-story hostel surrounded a central staircase. You wanted to keep the windows open so there was some circulation in the room. But keeping the windows open meant that all night long you had to hear the 2s and 3s and 4s of drunk tourists climbing 2, 3, 4, 5 stories of stairs and having not exactly intellectual conversations.

In the morning I met a couple of my roommates. They seemed like nice enough guys - a father and son duo from the United States with big guts and an empty handle of vodka.

They warned me not to go on the metro because it was too dangerous. They told me a second-hand story of a former roommate who had seized a pickpocket's hand but then relinquished his phone after the pickpocket pulled a knife. Also a similarly dubious story about a different roommate who had ceded his passport and wallet after being outnumbered by a gang of mostly rabid chicas.

The Lobby Again

I told the severely overworked but cheerful in his uniform front desk fellow that I had found a different hostel. I wanted to know if they could refund me for the nights I would not be staying there. He assured me with a smile that my money was already in the bank, but I could come back on Monday to speak with the manager.

Lesson learned #4 - I'm too old and probably always have been for party hostels.