10 September 2008: Dublin, Ireland

I woke up at 9:00 this morning, which was a slight improvement.

And I promise I'll stop mentioning this sort of thing once I begin sleeping decently. As it is now, it's a health risk and I might keel over any minute. So these things are important.

Once again I left nearly as soon as I woke up, to avoid being found in the hostel, and went with Joel to get his PPS number. Which, I think, is sort of like a social security number except you need it to get legit work. Or maybe I'm totally wrong about that.

The line was miles long, though, so we left and got some lunch. There isn't really a term for what we had, to be honest, because of how extreme it was. We split a loaf of bread and package of 40 slices of ham for €3 total. And, I'll tell you now to quell the suspense, that went through to dinner also. What a steal.

After we ate a dude called Joel about a massage.

This dude called him the previous night too, at 11:00, saying he found his name on gumtree.com and wanted to know if he could give him a massage for an hour and a half AND pay him €30. Joel said no, since it was admittedly the fucking dodgiest thing ever, but it was the same dude who called him this morning.

Anyway, this dude called back and Joel was understandably weirded out. But I figured, well, maybe it was legit. And it's not like I couldn't use €30. So Joel passed me the phone and told the guy-- who seemed perfectly normal-- that I would do it. He said he was training to be a masseuse and wanted to "practice technique" and so he would call back later.

At this point it started to rain, as usual, so we ducked into a bookstore to look around.

When it cleared up we went back to get Joel's PPS number, and the guy called back and said to walk up the street the hostel was on and meet him at a church. The phone number was private. I'll admit that at this point it was looking dodgier and dodgier, but I still thought it might be legit. So I said I'd meet him.

Well, either luckily or unluckily, I never saw the guy. Unluckily because I lost out on €30. Luckily if he was going to kill me.

I walked back to the hostel empty-handed, and when I got there the girl from the first couple days was working the desk. She knew I wasn't staying there anymore and told me I had to leave. Quite forcefully, because the other guys had probably realized I was staying there for free.

Now, earlier in the day I had walked by Browns Hostel, which was just up the street. There were some people outside it, and when I asked them if they were staying there they said yes and that they loved it. That was a good sign, since I didn't exactly "love" Citi Hostel, and also a good sign simply because there were people there. Not to mention the best sign being that it was €9/night compared to €12 at Citi Hostel. Not that I had paid that the two previous nights.

(It sort of occurs to me now that I mention Joel a ton and haven't really talked about anyone else in Dublin other than Rochelle. This is because Citi Hostel, in additon to being maybe the worst hostel in Dublin, might also be the least social. I saw about five people the entire time I was there, not including in the bathroom or at the front desk. There's no common space other than a TV room that no one uses and a kitchen that's closed during lunch hours. So, considering Joel was pretty much the only person I had met at the hostel, you can imagine how important it was that there were REAL PEOPLE at Browns Hostel.)

Anyway, when the girl at Citi Hostel told me I had to leave I went down to Browns Hostel and looked around. It was unbelievable. It was just as nice as Isaacs Hostel, with a huge kitchen and tons of couches and a long room for hanging out. And there were loads of people. It was incredible.

Anyway, I asked the guy at the desk if I could just pay a couple euro to "hang out" all night, since I'd be getting an early bus the next morning. He said he couldn't do that, but that if I handed out fliers for the hostel I could sleep there for free.

WOW!!!!!

So finally, after nearly a week in Dublin, I had found what I was looking for-- a hostel that would let me work there in exchange for a free bed!

And even better, all I had to do was hand out fliers, so I could be outside while doing it and it could take me as little time as it took to hand them out. What a deal!

I thanked the guy profusely, and he said that whenever I got back to Dublin I could come back and do the same thing again. Every day for a free bed every night. I couldn't believe it.

To top it off, and I guess this was mostly incentive to get me to not just throw the fliers in the trash-- which, by all means, I could have-- the guy at the desk said that if 24 more people booked beds, thus filling the hostel, he'd buy me a steak dinner. I knew there was no chance this would happen, since it was already past 4:00, but what an offer.

Joel had already booked one more night at Citi Hostel, so he was pretty pissed, but I set off to hand out fliers. And seriously, all I did to earn a free place to sleep was walk around Temple Bar handing out fliers to people wearing backpacks. It was unbelievable.

(For the record, 10 people came in and got beds. Which isn't terrible, and clinched that I was welcome back when I return to Dublin. Score.)

I went back to Citi Hostel to meet Joel at 8:00 and, along the way, passed a parade of young girls dressed like sluts. I asked one of them what was happening, and they said it was Junior Night at one of the nightclubs. Uh oh. It was literally Prostitots On Parade.

When I got to the hostel Joel asked if I had seen "all those hot chicks" walk by. I said yes but explained that it was Junior Night. He wasn't the least bit deterred and said we should go. Um, well, sure I guess.

I went back to the hostel and went into my new room, and there was this girl lamenting about her ex-boyfriend. She was going at it pretty good, and told me to give her a hug. She was lying down in bed, and I sat down next to her and we talked for a bit. She told me to stay, and now it was a choice between a sob story and a bunch of kiddie whores. I picked the lesser of two evils.

Say I lay down on this girl's bed, and pretty soon we started fooling around a little bit, and I realized I wasn't getting up to see Joel. I felt a little bad about this, but not a whole lot bad, and so it was alright.

I don't want to say anything more about this, because there isn't any need to, but this girl Jiane was Portuguese but has lived in England for the past few years. So she's quite the combination-- she has some Latina magic to her but still says adorable things like "I'm not shagging you with someone sleeping above us."

Welcome to the hostel.