Tourist Etiquette

[betenoire]

Originally Posted by EnderD_503

Also: people well over 40 who stay in youth hostels that are meant for backpackers/travelers in their teens, twenties or early thirties. It's called a youth hostel for a reason! It's frustrating when you're traveling and the hostel is full of families well over 40 who just want to travel cheaply instead of needing to travel cheaply. I don't know how many times I have not been able to find a place to sleep, while fitting the age demographic of youth hostels, because of this, and instead have to sleep on the floor in the train station waiting room because all the youth hostels are full of older vacationers. Youth hostels by definition cater to a younger crowd which is why they are so cheap (sometimes only 16-17 Euros a night), so I don't know why they let those tourists in.

For real. This. (Although I've never been to Europe and I do presume that the hostels there are different from the ones in North America.) I used to travel (here and in the US) a lot and would always stay in hostels - but now that I'm 33 I feel like it would be "creepy" of me if I did. So I don't. I wish other people would get some scruples.

Also about 10 years ago my friend K and I stayed at a hostel in New York and there were a couple of guys from France there. K is French (from Manitoba) and those two guys were giant douchebags to her and would pretend that they found her difficult to understand even though she could understand everything they said (and I could understand enough to get by). It was just really shitty behaviour. I didn't know before then that there was some weird "our French is better than your French" shit wandering around. Sometimes the stuff you learn when you exit your bubble is stuff you'd really rather not know, right?