The Hostel Hero

In 2017 I felt like I needed an attention seeking, “oh everybody look at me” life-changing experience. An experience so life changing that I summoned up all the courage I had stored up in my plump body and found myself “soul searching” in a country very similar to my Australian home - Canada. Both countries are English speaking, both possess residents with laid back attitudes and both are part of The Commonwealth. If I was going to take this giant leap out of my comfort zone, why not make it the most seamless, albeit cowardice, transition as possible?

I was lucky enough to be accepted into an international teaching exchange program. Myself and my exchange counterpart lived in each other’s homes, drove each other’s cars, taught in each other’s schools and were “positive” advocates for our homelands. Being the single, 28 year old “stallion” that I thought I was; Canada found themselves with a semi-respectable Aussie teacher by day and a complete and utter menace by night. An Australian man poetically thrusted into an “elementary school” with 60 teachers on staff. With only 3 of them being male, what could possibly go wrong? I remember the whirlwind of my first day impeccably. As I pin-balled from colleague to colleague, smiling forcefully and shaking hands, the attractive, middle-aged school counsellor sat me down and sternly delivered me one of the most prodigious introductions I’ve ever received:

“Hi James my name is … If you have any troubles with anything, please don’t hesitate to write me a note and shove it in my box!”

The final words were dispatched in slow motion; her hawk-like stare piercing through me as our eyes met. No one else in the staffroom blinked an eyelid. I kept my mouth closed in fear that if it opened at the slightest, Pandora’s box full of hysterical laughter would blurt out. Maybe “shove it in my box” wasn’t intended as a euphemism in this country? Only time would tell…

As I slowly attempted to find my way, I couldn’t help feeling out of my depth as the fast-paced Canadian education system swept me off my disoriented feet and threw me into the next lesson. The first gruelling, 16-week term almost broke me. The kids couldn’t understand a word I was saying as I quickly mumbled my heavily Australian directions towards them:

“For Science this arvo, we will be having a squiz at how machines operate!”

“Oi! Pick up that piece of rubbish and put it in the bin!”

“Stop asking me to go to the toilet, you had heaps of time during lunch!”

Who knew that the abbreviation for “afternoon” was unheard of in the north? I thought the kids were taking the piss when they completely ignored my instructions of picking up “rubbish” and putting it in the “bin”! And I’ll never forget the ghastly look of desperate embarrassment my students gave me when I repeated their questions of, “Oh, you need to go to the toilet?”…their preferred method of vocalisation being “washroom”. I guess I can understand how mortified they were when I was inadvertently informing the whole class of their intended goal in the “washroom”.

Sixteen antagonising weeks spent frozen in a classroom…or was it frozen in time? I remained composed, hopeful and strong; desperately seeking the desires of March Break as promised by my colleagues. As a belligerent, complaining primary school teacher from Australia who “wouldn’t know a tough day’s work if it bloody hit you in the face, mate”, you could imagine how hard this stint was for me. Our terms back home were 10 weeks long. Add another six weeks to that…doom. I didn’t have it too bad, remember all we only ever do is “finger-painting”.

At last March Break dusted the snow off its jacket and warmly presented itself to me. I’d been longing for its warmth for weeks. A whole week to myself with no responsibilities, no-one to answer to and no limitations? Shut up and take my money…all of it! I’d told the ladies from work that I was heading to Montreal for some classic, unadulterated debauchery. Like Shire folk from The Lord of The Rings, I was impressed to see how gleefully smitten they were of the stories I’d hopefully be returning with from my adventures. “James, do you have any snow boots?” one of my friends kindly asked. “Nah. I’ve just been wearing my (cardboard-esque) Vans. Hasn’t been too bad.” “No…you’re going to need them in Montreal! Here let's see if any of the older kids have left their outside shoes behind over the break!”

Lined up in uniform arrangement outside the grade 8 classroom were numerous pairs of “outside shoes”. Footwear designed to bravely protect their owners from the harsh Canadian winter elements. As luck would have it, I possess a fairly small foot (small feet, small …) and I had no trouble finding a suitable pair of winter boots to don for my expedition of northern Canada. “Just take these with you and return them here first week back. No one will know, eh?!” my close-to-retirement teaching partner friendly advised me. Yep…I was on!

With my black, miniature “weekender” suitcase that any hairdresser would be extremely jealous of in tow, I finally boarded the train, only hours away from beginning the best week of my life…

As the train aggressively rattled over the snow blanketed train tracks into Montreal, I continued to sit back in my epileptic inspired carriage chair, listening to Lady Gaga’s hit song - Bad Romance.

"Rommma rrrggggrooomama gaga ooo lala want your bad romance" - Such a tune.

When I finally arrived and disembarked Montreal Train Station, I trudged my way down the cobblestone, French streets; hairdresser’s suitcase behind me, eyes darting the street signs in front of me. I found my hostel quite easily. Situated in this cute little back alley, it was the perfect abode to accommodate my dry head for a few nights. Proudly bursting into the hostel, it was hard to mask the massive shit eating smile on my face. After being greeted by a gentle French Canadian man, we set to work exchanging a few pleasantries and then he happily gave me the tour and showed me to my room.

It was excruciatingly cold, very dark and happy hour in the bar downstairs had already started. I lazily departed with my suitcase, finding a nice spot for it in the middle of the 13 bed hostel room’s disgusting floor and moved as quickly as my dad bod could take me, blissfully bouncing down the stairs at the mere thought of having a drink. As all confident and self-finding travellers do when they’re seated alone at a bar, I whipped out my phone and buried my head into the screen; scrolling aimlessly through social media so no one around me would notice my isolated and desperate state of despair. Obviously not one person around me gave a flying fuck about this…

During my social media check up, I was rudely interrupted by another lost soul at the bar whose first exchange with me was, "Hey skippy cunt where are you from?" Happy to hear my favourite word repped so casually, I looked up from my phone to see another flamboyant Aussie sitting next to me, also sporting a similar shit eating grin to mine. We got talking and sure enough it turned out he was best friends with a girl in high school out bush who I was friends with in my home town...small world ‘eh'!?

Buried deep under the faux-European streets of Montreal, myself and my new pal Ethan bonded over stories of Australian culture and drank as much beer as was humanely possible in a very short amount of time. After a few hopeless games of pool my new mate pointed out that it was in fact karaoke night at the bar. Like a meerkat anxiously pausing and blankly staring into the abyss, I asked Ethan to calmly repeat himself as my eyes darted to every inch of the derelict bar to find where to sign myself up for success. As he began to open his mouth to repeat himself, I’d already found the book and bravely enlisted myself to sing Jason Derulo’s hit song, “Want You to Want Me”.

The song started (I’d played it on every bender for 2 years straight so I didn’t need the words) and I proceeded to lose my actual mind. In my egotistically possessed mind I thought I was playing in front of a sell out 90k crowd at Wembley, in reality I was playing in front of 40 dirt poor backpackers. Fuck it! I still put on an absolute show. There was a stool on the stage, I found myself standing on it, hand raised screaming, "Just the thought of you, gets me so high, so higgggh!” I then pressed on to perfect the most dominant front roll off the stool and onto my feet to finish it off. The crowd were barbarian in their praises of the performance and the dancing bear I’d morphed into marvelled jovially at all the extra attention.

With as much piss as humanly possible pumping through our veins, the subzero temperatures were not even a blimp on our radars. The bottle had taken a stranglehold of us and, like a little purple devil sitting on our shoulders, led us astray through the winter wonderland. More bars, strip clubs and late night eateries provided us with warmth as we provided all patrons unfortunate enough to meet us with the entertainment. A lucky encounter with a patient cabby ensured that my crusty head finally elegantly landed on my filthy hostel pillow. Day one done.

Arising the next day was not pretty. Still kitted in my jacket, beanie and boots; it appeared the struggle was real a few hours earlier and passing out face first on the bed was a more efficient way of getting to sleep. The indoor heat was pumped to the max and I was sweating profusely because I was still rugged up. This wasn’t the most ideal way to wake up and I needed a shower stat.

Soon enough I was showered, dressed in my winter clothes yet again and ready to brave the cold to go and attempt to culture my uncultured existence. Groggily finding my way to the hostel front doors, I descended out onto the street only to be engulfed by a tsunami of the coldest air imaginable. I stumbled my way up the street and soon realised I was stuck in the middle of a blizzard. “Fuck this…I'm going to the pub!”

I nestled into this little sports bar and messaged Ethan telling him where I was. He joined me for a pint and then left me for dead on his quest to visit a museum. I guess travelling to a city and actually involving one’s self in sight seeing activities trumps getting pissed at 10am. Loser. I politely declined his invitation, continued to sit by myself at the sports bar like the degenerate I was.

As the the hungover cobwebs that had engulfed my mind began to fade, I began to notice the surroundings in front of me. The bar was all but dead except for the drunkest group of individuals going absolutely ham on a table near me. I was all alone at the bar, bored, watching sport I didn’t even care about so I decided to mosey on over to them and join in on the fun. After a bit of small talk the boys tell me they were 18 and had come to Montreal in their March Break because the legal drinking age was 18. Not wanting to sound like that creepy old fuck who was at the bar solo, I lied and told the boys I was 22 and still at Uni. I continued to have the loosest day with these boys - there's no way I was that good at partying when I was that age! Shots were getting slammed down, jäger bombs were getting literally thrown into people's mouths and bar tenders were still serving clearly affected individuals...you have got to love limited responsible service of alcohol rules!

Me and the lads parted ways and it was still bucketing down snow outside. It was only a short walk to my hostel but I was coming in real hot - the shots and Jagers had well and truly caught up with me. I sat myself down next to the reception and was pleasantly surprised when I saw a beer tap sitting there. I ordered myself a beer and noticed the computer open on iTunes and asked if I could request a song. "Sure. What were you after?”, answered the polite man behind the counter. "...Bad Romance by Lady Gaga". To most of my fellow patron’s disappointment, I proceeded to give a little encore performance to everyone who was in the dining and kitchen area. It was at this time that I was now "that guy" of the hostel. The gentle French Canadian man was not so gentle anymore and locked me out of the hostel in my t-shirt in the middle of a blizzard, only letting me back in after I promised him I’d stop singing.

So as I was now 'that guy' of the hostel, half of the guests hated me (the boring ones) and the other half were loving it. I received an invitation to a room with a handful of South Americans travellers and we begin playing drinking games. Because they were all speaking Portuguese, I begin to lose very quickly at said drinking games. It was about this time that the downfall of the The Hostel Hero shifted into top gear. For some reason, the hostel reception were still serving me beers and I retired to my room to get some more money. I placed my beer on my bed, knocked it over and spilt a pint all through my suitcase...absolute genius! Fuck it - back down to the bar!

Again I woke up facedown on my lice-ridden pillow. Again I was fully clothed and sweating all the toxins out of every orifice. Again I was successful in my plight to be the most hungover traveller in Montreal. “No! You loser! You idiot. You degenerate clown!”, I cursed to myself as I desperately tried to find where the fuck my wallet was. I checked Snapchat and I had a message from a Debra. “I have your wallet, what room are you in?” A landslide of memories came flooding back to me. They involved me drunk in love with a Brazilian Debra; passionately and very publicly lashing her in one of the hostel bar’s booths. Lips lovingly locked in an epically embarrassing romp of tonsil-hockey. Debra arrived at my room and gave me a little rundown on the night. After our romantic pub-pashing, I cowardly retired to my bed as the bottle got the better of me - leaving my wallet behind on the table. After returning my wallet to me, Debra continued to walk into the hostel room. I had already retreated to the horizontal position and she had taken a place next to me on the bed - longingly looking at me as if I were about to take my final breaths in a hospital ward. Now my romantic decisions the night previous were extremely influenced by the higher and very dangerous powers of alcohol. I did not hold the same intentions the next day. Debra, with a treacherous and risky smile, began untying her hair ribbons in a highly sexualised way. “No…what’s she doing? Please not now”, I was desperately thinking to myself as I began to realise actually how many people were still in the room. Softly grabbing both my hands, she began to push them back to the steel bunk bed frames elegantly attempting to tie my hands to the bed. I laughed awkwardly, dropped my hands quickly and politely refused whatever sexual offer was about to commence. I had awoken the dragon. Debra shot up, passionately spat a fierce passage of Portuguese language-venom at me and stormed off. As she got to the door she dealt me one final blow…“Have a shower. You fucking stink!” Looking down on my shirt I realised that I was still covered in beer. The door slammed and I was broken. Both physically and emotionally. I looked over to the bed opposite me and met eyes with the extremely handsome and ripped African-French man lying there. He was in hysterics. “Good morning!”, he shouted at me as we both laughed at the scene that unfolded.

After a few hours of anxiety riddled semi consciousness, I sheepishly made my way down to the hostel kitchen to meet up with Ethan. Here were some comments I received off people who I had no recollection of meeting the night before:

"Here he is! How you feeling today?"

"Ah the drunk Aussie awakes from his slumber!"

"Caught in a bad romance!"

So turned out after these drinking games, I stumbled my way down to the bar and had the decency to sign myself up with this American girl in beer pong. Promising her the world and a beer pong championship; I then proceeded to play the worst game of beer pong anyone had ever seen. Supposedly I was throwing the ball sideways. My drunken form was so embarrassing that all eyes were on me in my disgustingly intoxicated state at the bar.

The weather was still ridiculous outside so I opted to hit the hostel bar again that evening. I sat with the two American girls I was playing beer pong with and they asked me if my mum had messaged me back yet? Confused as to what the fuck they were going on about, I feverishly scrambled for my phone to look through my messages and I was shocked to see this message from my mum:

“Wow looks amazing! How did you make your photos look so professional?”

Because I practically hadn’t left the street the hostel and sports bar were on, I had the decency to google image “Montreal”, screen shot some photos from the site, crop them and then send them to my mum. Son of the year for sure. Anyway myself, Ethan and these two American girls hit it off and we drank the night away. By night’s end I was walking with one back to my dorm room and Ethan had left with the other. On the trek to my room one of my roommates was exiting. With numerous ales under my belt he was even sexier than I remembered. The African-Frenchman slyly tipped the top of his cap with approval as we continued on to my crowded dorm room. Unfortunately for all involved, my phallus didn’t want to work that night, so we spent the majority of the night spooning…awww.

Deja vu. I was alone again in my bottom bunk bed. There was a shooting range going off in my head. Wait shooting range…that reminded me! Wasn’t I with an American girl last night? She was gone. Looking outside, I realised that the snow had finally stopped. I sent a Hail Mary message out to the Americans, asking if they were up for some exploring. It never snows where I’m from so to say I was keen to run a muck outside was an understatement. The streets were blanketed in the most snow I had ever seen and I was losing my shit. We walked to a little cafe and I began to annoy the shit out of the Americans. We enjoyed our day frolicking in the snow and the city and all was good in the world.

Come evening time and I was in a world of pain. Some form of takeaway food and some sober sleep looked so comforting. I was heavily contemplating throwing in the towel for the final night’s festivities. I walked past the Americans in the corridor and they belittled me; telling me to stop being a pussy and to have one final crack for the last night. Just as if Gildory Lockhart performed the Brackium Emendo; my rubber arm lost all forms of skeleton and I was indeed back on. I hung out with the Americans again as their company was great. We began playing truth or dare and I dared one of the girls to stay with me again tonight. She was in. This time the little boy was working…for a couple of epic minutes.

The final morning saw me crucified to the bed. The lines between fantasy and reality had been so densely blurred, that I needed to get out of the hostel. I had one more night booked but the streets (well actually the “street”) of Montreal had me locked so tightly in its grip, I was afraid I’d never leave. My soul was breathing in unison with the city. Not your average, healthy deep breaths; a blubbering, stuttering hack that any pack a day smoker would be proud of. I quickly threw all my belongings into my bag and stopped for one final chat with the male model sleeping opposite me. He was in hysterics at the sight of me. I bode him farewell, took a deep breath and presented myself at the front counter with my 4th spare dorm key ready to return. Luckily for me it was someone completely new on the door and she hadn’t witnessed any of my form. She was extremely pleasant with her well wishes and politely asked for me to return again in the near future.

Roughly six months later, return I did…