An Impromptu Communal Life
Moscow, Russia, February 14th, 2014
Salaroche

So you planned your winter trip with enough details two months in advance and when the scheduled departure date came along there you went. You feel good ‘cause you got all your flights paid and well coordinated, your hotel rooms booked, and your rental car reserved. As usual, you’re travelling by yourself, as you have for the past 10 years or so, so you’ve got your nomadic spirit in full gear.

Events on the first leg (Cambodia) of your trip unfold even much better than you had expected and by the time you arrive at the second leg (California) of your itinerary you’re feeling really good, jet lagged, but really good.

Then, suddenly, one of the links in your programme breaks and you’re left considerably disconnected from the rest of your journey. At that point there are just a couple of options left to you, either you call the rest of your plans off and start anew in a different direction at a new date, or you just lay back and limp around until the next leg (India) in your schedule kicks in.

But, darn, most Cheapoair tickets don’t allow for rerouting or reimbursing, so you’re basically left with one single option: To limp around during your itinerary’s second stop. But wait, with some sacrificing, you could still cut your losses, cut short your trip’s second leg, and reroute your third leg’s destination somewhere else.

Cutting your losses turns out representing an amount in the vicinity of US$1,500, but you’re still confident that in so doing your trip will be mended and even rewarded with some goods of the emotional and physical kind. So you just go ahead and change your third destination from Chennai, India, to St. Petersburg, Russia, where a nice and shapely young woman awaits you with open heart and arms.

In the meantime, however, you’re still facing a couple of weeks stranded in the second leg (Santa Barbara) of your trip, with the aggravating factor that now your budget is US$1,500 lower than anticipated. This means you have to take the frugal route for your stay: No fancy restaurants and only lower-end hotels.

And here’s where Hostels come in handy.

I was not aware that there were Hostels in Santa Barbara, California. That’s maybe because when you actually live in a city you don’t often pay much attention to things related to travellers visiting your city. So I was satisfyingly surprised to find that there are actually a few of those in SB. The one I ended up lodging at is the AAE (soon to have a new name)

I had stayed in Hostels a few times before in Hong Kong, where they have whole building floors refurbished to fit many small private and shared rooms. Every time I’ve been to Hong Kong I’ve stayed in a private Hostel room, but, for reasons of frugality, this time I chose a shared bedroom with three other people. Hostel shared bedrooms are usually mixed men & women setups, so I ended up sharing my bedroom with some guys and girls from a good variety of countries.

At the beginning I was a bit apprehensive as to how I would fit in such social atmosphere. I have been living almost entirely by myself over the past 19 years, so I wasn’t sure as to whether I would function well in an environment where I would be constantly exposed to other people.

To my surprise, I had absolutely no problem fitting in, but there were some factors that contributed in an essential manner to my getting easily adapted to my new situation, namely music and languages. To my good fortune, one of the owners of the Hostel was a singer-guitarist-songwriter, which meant he and I had some art in common.

Then there was the fact that a good number of visitors were from Switzerland, France, and Quebec, as well as from Ecuador, Chile, Uruguay, and others, countries where they speak languages that I speak as well. On top of that, there was also the Santa Barbara Film Festival going on, which gave me the opportunity to discuss cinema with some of the Hostel visitors that had come to town for the specific purpose of screening some of the movies in competition.

Having a conversation with Claudia Daude, for example, a young Brazilian filmmaker that had entered one of her films in the festival, was a thoroughly enjoyable experience. She was actually being interviewed via Skype right across the table from me when I first met her. Later on she was editing one of her future films using the Final Cut Pro application, pulling data into her RAM from a two-terabyte external hard drive.

I inquired about the hard drive and she gave me all the pertinent info. Then, a few minutes later, I heard her having a Skype conversation in Portuguese. When she was done she apologized to me for the conversation but I just replied that I loved Brazilian Portuguese and that the sound of it was actually music to my ears. Having said that, I grabbed one of the guitars lying against the wall in the living room and started playing “Corcovado” (“Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars”), a song written by Antonio Carlos Jobim and later recorded by Sinatra, among many other singers.

She was taken by surprise by the song, but perhaps not as impressed as I was at the fact that I remembered all the chords and the lyrics in Portuguese. There ensued a warm conversation about things Brazilian ending with Claudia showing me some of her ongoing film projects. She actually asked for my opinion about some of the editing she was working on at the time and I sincerely replied that they were excellent, which they were. My best wishes go to her in all her professional endeavors.

Having breakfast on the deck one morning with two young German women was an experience worth remembering as well. I mentioned to them my time working in a multinational environment in Barcelona, Spain, and recalled the fact that at the time I was quite free to discuss Germany’s Nazi past with my German colleagues. The girls were totally unfazed by my bringing up the subject, so I expanded it to include the case of Japan, which, unlike the German case, hasn’t yet come to a satisfactory closure. In a nutshell, my encounter with them was like a caress to my idea of human understanding.

Then there was Livia, the Swiss girl who had been travelling for the previous five months and had come down to Santa Barbara by train and bus all the way from Vancouver, B.C., Canada; a bright and cute young woman with a curious mind already containing enough world experience and information to opine capably on many subjects and circumstances. My conversations with Michael, the Swede Graphic Arts student coming to continue his studies at Santa Barbara City College, also left a good impression on me.

I can also recall my brief encounters with David, the USC Physics PhD student working on his dissertation who had come to attend a conference at my Alma Matter, UCSB; or my having a glass of wine with Marie-Claire, a French woman who actually made me grab the guitar and sing “Les Feuilles Mortes”, or my rather loud encounters with Alfonso, the Uruguayan owner of some hunting grounds near Montevideo, or my discussing the French New Wave with Rodrigo, a cinematographer from Ecuador, or my dinner with Jean-Luc, the Walloon Belgian biker who would take some five months to bike from Vancouver to the Mexican, border… all of them telling me in their own way that we’re all OK and that there are men and women of good will all over the world.

Then there were the locals, which included Kim, an American young woman of Chinese-Filipino descent who had been living at the Hostel for a few weeks already. An amateur singer-guitarist with more potential than she cares to think, who actually asked me to play and sing Otis Redding’s “Sitting on the Dock of the Bay” a few times in an effort to learn it. I naturally agreed and in the process I got to know a young woman who needed to clarify the appropriate criteria with which to choose the kind of apartment that would best suit her.

The Hostel staff was always in high spirits and their attention to detail on a daily basis was almost unfailing. There was Cam, the singer-guitarist, usually shrouded in a friendly cloud of smoke, Josh, the talkative energetic guy always ready to lend a hand or give information to anyone requesting it and, of course, Holly, the Beatle-fan who often seemed to be the real one in charge of the place. My sincere thanks go to them for their hospitality and I extend my best wishes to them in their plans to enlarge their Hostel operations in Santa Barbara.

There were also other encounters with other guys and girls from a good variety of countries, some encounters shorter than some others but, overall, all of them friendly and pleasant and, at times, informative as well. Of the latter kind I clearly recall my conversations with Gunnar, a Swede Cruise-Ship staff member who had flown to LAX from Tampa, Florida, where his ship was moored, and had come to Santa Barbara to visit his daughter who is studying at Santa Barbara City College.

My conversations with him ranged from Olof Palme, the Swede politician who was gunned down in February of 1986, to the Finn-Soviet Winter War (1939-1940), to the Nazi siege of Leningrad (1941-1944), passing through the Swede political evolution during the recent two or three decades and a few other Swede social idiosyncrasies of the interesting kind.

With all of the above in mind, it would be perfectly fair to say that I wouldn’t have had such an enriching experience had I managed to follow the schedule I had initially traced for the California leg of my trip. For one, I got back to playing guitar and sing, which is something I hadn’t really done for the previous eight months or so. Then, I had the chance to practice my French with Belgian, Swiss, and French people, which is not something I get to do on any regular period of time; and last, I got to mingle with some other travellers who had more than a few things and stories to share.

In a nutshell, therefore, my impromptu communal experience in Santa Barbara turned out being much more worth my while in California than any other alternative travel plan I might have imagined.

Salaroche