My husband told this story at our wedding and it's one that many friends have heard before. It always gets a laugh, although at the time you can bet I didn't find it quite so amusing. It was 2006 and we were backpacking around Europe - London, Gibraltar, Madrid, Cordoba, Chamonix, Milan. We ran into a few glitches on the trip, the first being that the airline misplaced my luggage (one large, bright yellow backpack) on the first leg of the trip. Mike and I put our backpacks one after another on the luggage conveyor belt; his flew with us to London and somehow mine stayed back in Toronto. Fortunately for me we were spending three days in London with my family and I was able to borrow a few items from my younger cousin until the luggage could arrive two days later. From then on we rearranged our bags so that each backpack contained half of each of our belongings. There were many other flights and train rides still to come.
The other glitch, which is the story my husband told at our wedding, occurred in Gibraltar. We were staying mainly in hostels whenever we weren't visiting family and there was really only one hostel to choose from at the time in Gibraltar. Emile Hostel was only 1.5 km from the airport so we walked there once the plane landed (literally, we walked across the tarmac of the runway after deplaning). It was a mediocre hostel, mostly empty from what we could see. The front desk was in its own little one-storey house and after check-in we were taken into the next single-level building where guestrooms were located. We entered through a glass door and then the host used his key to open a tiny door high up in the middle of the hallway. Behind it were room keys, supposedly for all the guest rooms in the hostel. He used a pole to take down the key to our room, handed it to us, and left the building.
I was surprised to find Gibraltar so deserted in the evening. Shops closed early, streets were empty after 5pm, and there wasn't much of a night life. After a quick dinner at a nearby pub we headed back to the hostel, again not running into anyone in the halls. Our tiny bare room was furnished simply with two single beds and a side table. We decided to push the two single beds together into the middle of the room for a more cozy feel. Not that we would have use for the beds that night, as it turned out.
The room was self-locking so we decided to take turns washing up in the communal bathroom down the hall. I went first to brush my teeth. Before finishing up Mike rounded the corner with his toiletries kit, ready for his turn. "Did you bring the key?" I asked. No, he did not. And so began the most interesting evening of our Europe trip.
We headed to front desk in the next building over. By now the lights were off and the house looked empty. We knocked and rang the doorbell, circled the house, knocked some more. It was past office hours so expectations were low that anyone was around. At the very least the glass door to enter our hostel was not self-locking and we were able to return inside. Next thought was to try and obtain another key from that little door in the hallway. However the little door was well off the ground above head level and we had no means of getting it open. We thought about prying open our room door (there was already a disconcerting gap between the door and the frame near the knob as if it had been done before) but we didn't have access to a knife or credit card. Finally I thought we had a real chance when I remembered Mike's lock-picking skills. A while back he had ordered a lock-picking set (interesting hobby, I'll admit) and practiced on a locking doorknob he had purchased from Home Depot. Mike had even practiced on the front door to my parents' house, which likely raised some questions when they first found him doing so.
I returned to the bathroom and hunted around. When I found a bobby pin near one of the sinks I thought it was fate. I honestly thought that within ten minutes Mike would be able to MacGyver the door we'd be lying in bed laughing about what had just happened. Thirty minutes later we were still on our hands and knees outside our locked door, jiggling and twisting the bobby pin without success.
Eventually we came to terms with the fact that we wouldn't be spending the night in the hostel room. However I felt exposed and unsafe in the hallway with large windows and an unlocking glass door to the dark outdoors. I imagined us falling asleep in the hall and waking up to local thugs towering over us.
The only locking room we had access to was the communal shower. It was a small tiled room, not much larger than a typical house bathroom, but with two shower heads and a little raised edge on the floor to prevent water from flooding out into the hall. Who designed this? Now I'm used to communal showers at public swimming pool but there isn't a chance in hell I'd shower in a locking room with another stranger.
I'm sure I never thought I'd do what I did next either but desperate times, you know. Turns out that this somewhat creepy tiled room would become our bedroom for the night; the grungy tiled floor, our bed. I couldn't bare the thought of lying directly on the grimy floor so we removed the shower curtain and lay it down first. I can't remember now whether we had put the outer face of the curtain up and honestly try not to think too much about it anymore.
After lying down for a while on the cold, hard floor, tired and frustrated from the evening, we heard the slow shuffling of feet from what sounded like a very, very old man. I was surprised to know anyone else was in the entire hostel at all as we hadn't heard a sound from any other room after arriving. The footsteps shuffled closer and the phlegmy hacking coughs were growing louder. We decided to remain silent behind the shower room door which he would have to pass on his way to the bathroom stalls so as not to startle him in the middle of the night. Finally the absurdity of it all hit me as I lay shivering on the sure-to-be moldy shower curtain atop a dirty tiled floor, listening to an octogenarian hacking out his lung and grunting as he tried to pass a bowel movement just steps away from our door. It was just too much and I started to shake uncontrollably with laughter (the silent kind that only happens with a really good belly-aching laugh). I must have snapped.
When the laughter was under control and the man had finally returned to his room we tried to get some shut eye. It was impossible to fall asleep under such conditions though, and I was freezing cold with just a T-shirt and thin pyjama bottoms on. I was lying down while Mike sat against the wall warming my feet with his stomach and hands. Eventually I joined him sitting up (tiles are hard on the spine) and there we passed the remaining hours of the night, listening to cats meowing outside the tiny window, waiting for the sun to rise.
In the morning we dragged our tired, aching bodies back to the front desk and briefly explained our predicament. I could tell from the smirk on the man's face he found it more than a little amusing. With no questions asked he lead us back to our room and opened the door. The next thing I knew I was back in the cursed shower room with a clean towel and change of clothes to take what would be one of the best hot showers I've had in my life.
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| Visiting the Barbary Apes of Gibraltar after a night spent sleeping in the shower |
