Juvenile prison
Belfort, France, summer of '99. Having foolishly overestimated my command of the French language, I spent some weeks hitchhiking the eastern part of the country. I planned everything as I went along and located the youth hostels by asking at the tourist offices.

Apart from having spent the first night at the Strasbourg train station this lack of planning had worked out and I had located the youth hostels in all the other cities. In Belfort, however, I arrived half an hour after the tourist office had closed. With the aid of the police and a bus driver I ended up in the other end of the city. I asked some of the locals but they had never heard of the hostel. However, being very nice people, they made a phone call for information, then offered to drive me to the youth hostel. Once again I went to another part of the city.

They were friendly at the place, and the standard was no worse that at some of the other youth hostels, yet I suppose I should have read the sign ..

Or maybe I should have been tipped off by the smile when they put down the reason for my stay as "holiday".

Or maybe by my mysterious roommate who seemed to live quite permanently in the room (he turned in much later than me and I never saw his face).

Or the prison like breakfast where everyone was staring at me.

I guess I finally figured it out when I left and they wanted no money at all. One hell of a story, though.
(spinoza, Mon 25 Apr 2005, 10:29, Reply)