Nie wieder Matratzenlager. OR: down with dormitories!

Those of you who are on Facebook will have seen my post there the other day. I didn't have the strength to write any more than that. Having promised some people to elaborate, here goes. 

Beneath you see a photograph, sneakily taken by me, from my niche in the corner of the so-called Matratzenlager (literally: mattress place; usual translation: dormitory) in the Schachenhaus on Tuesday morning. For the uninitiated amongst you, this is a (small) room within a hut, with multiple bunk beds, which means a bunk for eight people has four mattresses on the bottom and four on the top. There was also a four-person option in our room. Having stuffed a small room full of bunks, it is clear to see that there is space for little else, so add twelve adults, twelve backpacks, assorted waterbottles, slippers and other necessary accoutrements and the room starts to look a little overcrowded. But none of this matters at first, as you deposit your few belongings on your allotted pallet, and hurry off to get the first beer of the day. All seems well. Seated on an uncomfortable but authentic rustic bench or chair-with-a-heart-in-the-back like Heidi had, you sip away and peruse the 'menu'. Sighing with relief that there is only one dish you could possibly stomach, thus doing away with any silly dithering which might irritate your partner, you order a bowl of stodge with cheese and, just for the hell of it, another beer. An hour later you investigate the 'facilities'. Both toilet cubicles are occupied. You decide to wait. Someone rushes past you with a sense of urgency. If they had been a small boy, they'd have been clutching their behind. You decide to postpone your visit and have another beer. 

After all this beer, you are feeling quite jolly and well-disposed towards your room-mates and, as darkness falls (which it does remarkably early up there), there is not much option but to prepare yourself for bed. This you do in the gloom, stumbling around on the one square foot of floor remaining and wondering where you put your toothbrush. But you manage it, and you even get to the loo before the next shift arrive to perform their ablutions. Safely installed within your sleeping sheet, you sigh with contentment (or something). A bat flutters at the window, a waft of alpine air tickles your nasal hairs, a goat farts somewhere on the meadow. This is what you came for!

In ones and twos, the rest of the party blunder into the room. The drunk ones switch on the lights and dig around in noisy plastic bags and have stage-whispery discussions about where the towel is. But you remain patient. Pleasantly tired, you wait for sleep to transport you away from this alien situation.

Well, my sleep dumped me right back in it after ninety minutes. Dreaming that a giant warthog was lying next to me, I woke with horror to find it was true. The warthog had a wife, and both had serious phlegm issues. The word snore does not do it justice. Earplugs were a waste of time. Always a light sleeper (why was I there in the first place, you ask), I spent the next six hours alternating between rage, fury, frustration and extreme fatigue. A small break in the snorting chorus meant I dropped off around five a.m. Half an hour later, someone's alarm went off, and the day had begun. The sun rose, and I lay there, exhausted, watching as people in various stages of undress (not a pretty sight) emerged from their cocoons. See picture below (a naked backside would have been the next shot). 

Resigning yourself to the fact you will be exhausted all day, you shuffle off to breakfast, having 'freshened up' with thirty other people in the two-sink washroom beforehand. You chew on some stale bread and drink a cup of Muckefuck.

So why was I there, and why indeed does anybody pay for this experience? CG and I mulled this over from the comfort of our wide and spacious bed the following evening. What possesses grown men and women, with good incomes (they were all wearing The North Face or such like - a reliable indicator) to shun comfort and privacy and hygiene, and lie cheek-by-jowl with the very people they spend half their lives trying to avoid, in other words, everyone else? We decided that it reminds them of childhood. Scout camp and the like. Getting back to basics. A mini-break from the materialist, consumerist trappings of daily life.

I hope I haven't put you off, though I dare say the Alpine Association is unlikely to recruit me for advertising purposes any time soon. As CG always said, I'm a spoilt city slicker with a penchant for luxury.  But at least I tried.