Sleep In Fact

July 16
The alarm is going off and who knows what that means. The Sleep In Fact hostel here in Copenhagen, Denmark should have an alarm and a good number other things, but as of now I can confirm only the alarm. They should have someone at reception from 12pm to 3pm and 3am and 6am, but they don’t. They should have a decent means of securing the hostel and a system for recording who is staying here, but they don’t have either of those either.

What the Sleep In Fact hostel here in Copenhagen, Denmark has—in addition to the alarm that is still going off—is a climbable tree next to the porch in back. The burglar(s) climb up the tree, jump through the broken barbed wire and over the white railing with the pink potted flowers and walk into the two giant, unlocked dorm rooms to get their bread and beer money. They must have drunk well last night on my 960 kroners ($160) and on Brian’s 250 kroners. Brian says the bandits were unable to use his credit card and it’s unclear what use they’ll have for his Hosteling International membership card. Maybe they can get a discount next time they check into a place and then make off with a wallet while its owner is in the shower.

When I told the guy at reception that I had cash taken out of my jeans just one night after Brian had his wallet lifted, he was unmoved by the pair of thefts. “Oh, yes, there have been many robberies here recently. You have to be careful, there are a lot of bastards out there.”

The thieves know the hostel is unstaffed from 3-6am, making it quite vulnerable. They know when its 3am because they have the $200 watch Brian’s girlfriend gave him for his last birthday. The Swedish girls and I made it home just before 3am the other night. At 4am Jenny shook me awake. “You should get up.”

The girls had been talking in bed when they noticed someone walking in the room. Each of the rooms have 32 beds so it’s hard to keep track of everyone, especially when it’s dark. But a big new hostel opened up in Copenhagen this summer and has drained away most of Sleep In Fact’s business. There were only five people staying in the Swedish girls’ room and the guy walking by in a white t-shirt wasn’t one of them. The girls were a bit startled and after a couple minutes they followed the guy out of their room and looked out from the porch where they saw him hiding in the bushes bellow. That was when they woke me up.

I didn’t see anything in the bushes but we thought it might be a good idea to lock the doors, which were wide open to let some air in. We couldn’t figure out how to lock one of them so we wedged it closed with a chair. In the morning everyone’s stuff seemed to be where they left it and the folks at the Sleep In Fact Hostel, here in Copenhagen, Denmark decided they would lock the doors at night.