Doing the Splits

When you say you are going backpacking for a few months you are likely to get a couple of odd looks. People who’ve never stayed in hostels definitely have an predetermined view of what they think your lodgings will be like for the ensuing period. They think hostels are just places frequented by dreadlocked hippies who could never get a real job and haven’t bathed in weeks. It’s a place of cold showers, clogged toilets, greasy kitchens, lumpy pillows, bedbugs, a lack of privacy and overcrowded dormitories. A place where drug-riddled dropouts lounge about all day in amongst a bacteria kibbutz playing folk songs on their ukuleles, chanting Hare Krishna and having elaborate conversations about why they all hate capitalism.

The truth is that nine out ten times this is not the case. Hostels are safe and clean and well maintained. But, of course, there is that one time in ten where it’s not up to such exacting standards.

When I got to Split I walked past the hostel building three times before realising I was standing in front of it. Set at the end of a large parking station, next to an abandoned lot and across from the main road sat a nondescript, five storey concrete apartment building. To get there I walked out of the historic Diocletian palace and through a quiet street. Turning into the carpark, I passed only a few olive-branch-carrying worshipers on their way to Palm Sunday mass. Otherwise, the area felt abandoned. Approaching the building, I looked at it and then at myself. The grey building along with my outfit made up of white runners, oversized jeans and black zip-up jumper provided a vivid image of desolation. All I need was someone to take a black-and-white photo and you would have thought this was Yugoslavia forty years prior, during communist rule. The awning had something written in Croatian on it, which was clearly not the name of the hostel. In fact, initially there seemed to be no signage whatsoever to say that this was the hostel. I checked the address again. It was the right address. The words “surely” and “not” repeated themselves in my head.

I walked towards the conveniently unlocked front door of the building. Scanning the list of residents, I noticed some English words which I recognised - the name of the hostel. I was in the right place. Though I still was not fully convinced. I chose not to press the buzzer and instead made use of the unlocked door, leaving open the possibility that I could change my mind and run away at any time. I slipped into the foyer, stepping onto a rectangular-shaped hole in the landing where a doormat should have been. I began climbing the stairs, unsure of exactly which floor I was going to.

The sound of me stepping on each concrete stair, blackened by years of neglect, echoed throughout the building. On the first floor were two uninviting doors that seemed to be the entrances to what were, at least at some point, medical offices. The second floor had another two doors which sat timidly, as if their inhabitants were still hiding behind them painfully waiting for the knock of the Yugoslavian militia. A sign of more modern times, the third floor had a fire extinguisher which sat behind a glass pane with an English translation that read “To crash in event of fire.” The glass had been broken already. The fourth floor had an abandoned upright piano sitting in between it’s two apartments’ doors. By the time I got to the fifth and final floor there was a sign next to the door. A sign with the name of the hostel.

Clasping the door handle, I crossed over the threshold and inhaled the smell of boiled cabbage that lingered behind the door. I entered what was formerly two apartments but had been merged into one. The hostel resembled more of an overcrowded share-house than most other hostels I’d stayed at. It was complete with a tiny kitchen, a living room, three toilets and a few rooms for its up to twenty-six transitory inhabitants. The dormitory was comfortable, if a little cramped. It resembled less of a luxury holiday accommodation and more like one of the places you’d see on Border Security that was used to house foreigners overstaying their visas (which, to an extent, could have been true).

After dropping off my bags and heading down the ten flights of stairs, I headed out for a walk through the old Jewish cemetery, which had a 4.6 star rating on Google reviews (Sydney’s Macquarie Cemetery has a mere 4.3). And so began my three day stint in the sunshine-drenched, seaside paradise of Split.

To better times.