Stay in Generator Copenhagen

I booked this whole trip before the ones to the Netherlands and Poznan. Though I only had one night in a hostel at that point I have booked the seven nights in an eight-bed dormatory at the Generator Copenhagen hostel. Booking was very easy online.

As I arrived the Generator and checked in, the room was just as expected. Being on the sixth floor means either taking a bunch of stairs or the elevator. But seven nights for 155 EUR in an otherwise expensive city is so cheap that I will not complain about that.

The receptionist has given me two key cards as the magnetic strips supposedly get erased frequently. Initially I inserted it the wrong way. Do you also find it confusing that the cancellation looks like the glitch art on the rest of the card and the dotted arrow more blends into the art?

In my room I made my bed. In every hostel the procedure is different, here they put the sheets onto the pillow and blanket, you put the sheet onto the mattress.

On one evening I sat a bit on the deck of the hostel. They have large wooden furniture there, it should be even nicer during the day. Eventually the wind got too cold, so I moved to the inside onto one of the many couches. Two Danish businessmen who were there for the beer joined me and we had a pleasant chat. They were surprised to hear that I came here to see the bike infrastructure even though it is just a hobby of mine. Later on they asked whether I was abroad because my English is better than what they are used with Germans. We then talked about learning languages. In Denmark they have English from first grade and German from fifth grade. This seems sensible as Germany is their largest partner in trade they told me. They were also interested in the room prices and mockingly asked whether one could book an eighth bed dormatory with seven blond girls. Eventually they left but not without telling me how to properly pronounce København: "Köbenhaun" in German and perhaps "cobenhaughn" in English, though the "ø"/"ö" does not really have a corresponding sound in English.

Nowadays I try to fill my water bottle with the local tap water. This turned out to be difficult in my dorm as the faucet was too low. I ended up using the shower but the shower head is wider than the opening of the bottle. This works but is slow, messy and wasteful. At the bar they had water pitchers but that was not very convenient when I was in the room already.

It is just the second evening and this article already had more than 5000 words. Writing on the phone is not ideal and I saw a computer in the lobby. So I just opened up Google Docs document there and was quickly annoyed. The computer is woefully underpowered for running Windows 10 and browsers with tons of bloat add-ons. Every time you opened a tab it would open some wrapper for Google search. Then the screen was dirty, way too bright and the keyboard was not exactly an improvement to my touchscreen. After writing a single paragraph, accidentally hitting a shortcut and bringing the computer to a halt, I quit that endeavor and went back to my phone.

Staying at the same hostel for the whole duration of the trip had the pleasantry of being able to leave most of my stuff in the storage chest in the room over the days. On the trips between the cities in Holland I had to carry everything around, which was annoying after a while. Also I could just let my towel dry on a hanger. I can recommend trying to get the lower part of the bunk bed.

For the next trip I am going to pack a couple reusable zip ties. There were not many proper points to hang stuff.

Roommates

The key difference between a Hotel and a Hostel is that you share a room with strangers. So far I had a lot of pleasant encounters in hostels, which had been the same on this trip. But there were also some rather interesting characters this time.

Carrying earplugs is a must in a hostel. One of my roommates had a really loud snoring which even sounds unhealthy as he occasionally stopped breathing altogether (sleep apnea?). With the earplugs one can find some sleep. This person had been sleeping in the room most of the time I was there, so I will just call him always-sleeping-guy.

Some days into the trip we had a new person on the room, Michael. He travels around and does voluntary work for a room and board. Pretty much like work & travel. He recently was on an organic farm in Turkey. In Denmark it was hard to find a farm to work at because you apparently need a special visa for work and the farmers did not want to get into trouble. He seemed rather upset about all the worker protection laws that would kick in if he should have a work accident. Apparently these things are just hindrances to him. For this reason did not stay in Denmark for long but headed off to Iceland to help some older person with his sheep, and he never worked with sheep before.

Being also a guitar player he asked downstairs whether it was okay to play some music. The receptionist said that they would need to ask somebody else and Michael just decided that it was not going to work. Incidentally he was sitting in the little bathroom on the closed toilet, as that was the only seat in the room. We had a lengthy conversation about different hostels in various cities and that this one was just too big and professional to actually have this honest spontaneous music sessions. It reminded me of Charly & Yvonne (publishing CDs as Bamboozy) who stay the winters on the Hacienda Buena Suerte and play music there every evening. This is a really nice thing and it really feels spontaneous every evening.

He eventually headed off and I used the toilet to find that the floor was really sticky. I notified the reception and they were really sorry and notified housekeeping. Also there had been wet toilet paper on the floor and the toilet seat up. Looked like somebody had a bad aim and did not fully clean up afterwards. For this reason a lot of other travelers carry flip-flops.

Back in the hostel room I overheard a discussion with Michael and a girl, apparently he had slept in her bed. I recalled that when we arrived he asked whether the beds were numbered and I thought that he did find his one then. Back then he told me that the bed was not made but he did not mind. And then he moved to the one above mine. The girl started that it was no problem for her, which I did not really buy.

When I went to sleep that evening, Michael was already sleeping and snoring. That night I had snoring from him and always-sleeping-guy. To make it worse Michael frequently tossed around in sleep, shaking the whole bunk bed. Earplugs can help against the snoring, but I doubt that there is anything one can do against the shaking.

Given the circumstances I did not sleep as well as the other nights. In the morning I noticed that my (own) towel was missing while Michael showed. So he just took some towel that was available. Sharing a bedroom with seven people, having loud snoring and a sticky toilet floor is one thing, but other people taking my personal hygiene stuff crosses the line. Getting a fresh towel at the reception was an easy fix.

It seems that one has to keep one's bed full of personal stuff such that it looks taken. Also the towel should be placed somewhere at the bed to be clearly a personal one. My other five hostel stays in the Netherlands were fine in this regard, I presume that this was a very special guest.

A few days into the trip a group of Canadian travelers arrived in the room. As it was their first time in a hostel they each looked at bathroom, showers, beds and the storage lockers. We had a little conversation about where we all come from and our intentions for visiting. One of them told me that he had an uncle living near Köln and that European cities are just so large and dense compared to the middle of nowhere where he lives in Canada.

They took showers after the exhausting flight and always-sleeping-guy came in from somewhere else. After he took a shower he applied various sprays and stuff, I lost track. Together with the stuff that the girls used the room was packed with aerosols, I got a mild headache. I wonder how much ailment of that guy comes from the apparent ludicrous use of deodorant, hair spray, cologne and whatnot.

Back in the evening I had a very long discussion about capitalism, social security systems and our deviating opinions about equality of chances and whether extreme differences in income are fair. It was a very interesting and frame challenging conversation!

One one day at 22:50 I decided to sleep and went to bed. Only always-sleeping-guy was there, so besides the snoring it was quiet. After a couple hours of sleeping I got woken up by the other travelers who had been out and about. Then they settled down and began snoring, I heard three people competing for the most annoying sound. At 5:30 I woke up again, and was thirsty; my water bottle was empty. After filling it up in the shower the one Canadian told me that he did not manage to sleep until that point because of the snoring. I suggested getting earplugs from the reception. This little conversation woke up Vincent from France below. Then I must have slept again because I got woken up again by the construction site right in front of the hostel. It sounded like lots of stones being dumped onto metal. As a side effect I got to see a nice sunrise from the hostel window:

In order to continue this sleepless night the alarm clock on the phone of the guy above me went off at 7:40. With some song and vibration that propagated through the metal frame of the bed. Naively I hoped that it would stop after the song but it did not. I got up and saw the guy having the phone right next to his head and still dozing. A few knocks on the steel frame brought him back from dozing, he apologized and woke up. He and the other Canadians got up, took stuff from their storage chests under the bed, which have hard plastic wheels and are noisy. At 8:30 the room was quiet again after they let the door fall close with a loud boom. It was just Vincent and me left and we both tried to sleep. But although I was really tired, I just could not find sleep again and gave up on it.

This is the negative side of a hostel. One could have tried to close the windows against the noise from the construction site but then the air would just turn bad really quick and the snoring remains anyway.

On the second last evening we had a very peculiar encounter with always-sleeping-guy. I had a very interesting discussion with one of the Canadians as he approached our beds. As it was 2:30 I thought that he wanted us to stop chatting such that he could get to sleep. But instead he told us how awesome roommates we are and that we should please continue talking as it was very interesting to listen. Then he told us about the Japanese lady who was in the room with him before we arrived and how horrible this person supposedly was. His English was not so good that all the meaning came across, but I think we got the important parts of the story as he told it multiple times. We eventually starting laughing at the situation as a whole, then he started to laugh with us and it did not stop for a while. Suddenly there was loud snoring from his bed, so he must have fallen asleep while we were still rather loud. And he did not wake up until 14:00 the next day. I would like to be able to sleep sound like that!