Personal, Social Circle, Stories - Thursday, October 1, 2009 7:07 - 0 Comments

Backpackers, Hostels and Language Barriers

I’ve been in Europe for over a month now. And although I’ve spent more time crashing with people I know than not, I’ve now stayed in a few hostels in three cities. The “backpacker” scene in Europe is alive and well with mostly 20-30ish single people with no jobs and little money schlepping across the continent at whatever pace they choose.

First off, I know in the States a lot of people in college or just coming out of college talk a lot about “backpacking Europe” or some other similar plan — whether it be working for a non-profit or teaching English somewhere — basically living in other countries for unspecified amount of times with no ties back home. To those of you reading in that category who have ever considered doing something like this, DO IT. Seriously, do it. I’ve never done it — and this Europe trip is the closest thing I’ve done to it — but after meeting dozens of these people, I can say without a doubt you should do it. The people you meet and experiences you have are more than worth it.

With that said, when I’m in these hostels, I’m ironically usually hanging out with native-English speakers — Aussies, Brits, Irish, Scots, etc.

Also, gaming girls in hostels is really fucking easy. It’s like a bastardized version of College Game. Hostels are basically like college dorms and it’s insanely easy to meet everyone. Everyone’s constantly introducing themselves to each other. You meet a handful of people, then meet the people they, and then meet the people THEY know, and suddenly you’ve met 3-4 cute girls who are comfortable around you, are on vacation and looking for fun, and are living in the same building as you.

A note about the language barrier: I came to Europe pretty confident in dealing with the language barrier, as I’ve dealt with it in Latin America plenty of times. I spoke broken Spanish there, and most girls speak broken English here. Well, I’ve realized that what languages you speak are 100x more important than languages she speaks. After suffering through probably 10 sets where the girl painfully tries to spit something out in English and then gets frustrated that I don’t understand her and goes and does something else, I’ve decided that anything, and I mean ANYTHING, you know in a girl’s native language helps you ten times more than whatever she knows in yours. It makes sense, if she’s struggling and putting in the effort, then her state is dropping, whereas if you’re struggling and putting in the effort, she’s going to find it cute and endearing.

Anyway, off to Prague tomorrow.