I dragged my larger-than-necessary suitcase from Powell Station to the hostel on 6th. I’d just flown in from Tokyo for the San Francisco Writer’s Conference that started the next day. I was exhausted and my phone was not making my day any easier: the battery would lose charge like sand through a sieve, and it would intermittently decide that it had no data capabilities. So I’d memorized the way as best I could and hoped for the best.
When I reached the intersection where the hostel was supposed to be, I saw that the building on the corner was under construction. I felt a little anxious—was this the wrong place, after all?—but was too tired to worry too much. I walked around the construction site and there it was: an unassuming townhouse painted in red accented with yellow and a small sign over the door that said “Europa Hostel.”
There was just a door and an intercom, so I rang the bell. A muffled man’s voice responded, but I couldn’t understand what he’d said.
“Hi,” I said instead. “Is this the Eur-”
“Pull the door towards you,” said the man’s voice, slowly this time. “And turn the handle.”
The door buzzed and I did as I was told. The door opened to a steep, narrow staircase. I struggled up the stairs with my suitcase, turning 2 corners just to reach the first floor. At the landing, the staircase continued on my left, so I looked down the hallway to my right. At the end of the hallway was a window that seemed to be the reception. Two young men with German(-ish*) accents were checking in, a process that was made extra complicated by the fact that they could not remember which name the booking had been under.
I stood in line behind them.
The man behind the window finished checking them in and handed them their card keys. He gave them the run down of the place, which was fairly standard.
“I don’t care what you smoke,” he finished. “But smoke it outside.”
The men gave a startled laugh and thanked him. Just as I stepped forward, another man came up the staircase behind me.
“You here for your bag?” asked the man behind the window, ducking out of the room.
“Yes,” said the new man, with an Indian(-ish) accent. “And can you call me a taxi?”
The door next to the window opened and the man from the hostel brought out a black suitcase.
“You’re a taxi,” he said very seriously as he handed the suitcase over.
The guest took his bag and looked a little confused.
“Can you call me a taxi?” he repeated.
“Yes,” sighed the man from the hostel. “It’ll arrive out front.”
“Thank you,” said the guest and left.
The man from the hostel ducked back inside and emerged momentarily back at the desk behind the window.
“People just don’t get American humor,” he lamented to me as he pushed buttons on the phone without looking.
It took me a good ten minutes to check in after that, because we kept getting side-tracked with conversation.
*My recognition of accents is highly unreliable. Take my accent-approximations with many grains of salt.