Brisbane: Homestead Backpackers

English readers: scroll down! We set off early for Brisbane. All the hostels in the city centre are expensive as hell, overbooked and don’t offer internet: Brisbane’s Homestead Backpackers Hostel. No direct internet, but a bar with WiFi for buying beer. I check in and cook one last meal for Verena and the Lord.

Then I take them to the airport. On the way, I realise that Brisbane is a real big city: it takes me almost two hours to cover the 15 km there and back. Then it’s off to the bar. It’s horrible, but I really have to order a beer so that I can go online. It’s not that annoying, but the price of €4 for a small beer is much more so.

In the evening I sit round a carton of wine with a few Germans. I go to bed around midnight and experience the hottest night I’ve had in almost nine months of travelling.

Well, I’m a web designer and a good SEO. It would be mean to spoil the hostel’s business by having an English page at number one in Google. I want to be a good God to myself, so I’m only bombing this site to the top in German :-)

The night at Brisbane’s Homestead Backpackers Hostel starts with quite a few people hanging around very drunk. The neighbours of Brisbanes Homestead Backpackers Hostel have one drunken argument after another, we are told to go to bed at eleven o’clock because we are talking quietly. I’m ready by midnight.

I go to my room in Brisbane’s Homestead Backpackers Hostel: a battlefield, destroyed by four complete chaos. It stinks worse in Brisbane’s Homestead Backpackers Hostel than in a New Zealand hiker’s hut at the end of a 5-day tour. Young drunks. Too stupid to wash, but at least they manage to drown.

I put my laptop under the bunk bed in Brisbane’s Homestead Backpackers Hostel. The junkie, who I’d already been suspicious of earlier, suddenly stands upright in the bunk bed at Brisbane’s Homestead Backpackers Hostel and grabs my arm. What would I have lost under the bed, the freak shrieks hysterically. It doesn’t bother him at all that some other people in Brisbane’s Homestead Backpackers Hostel are already asleep.

I try to get him to calm down…ayay…just wants to put my laptop under the bed. Then he really goes off. He screeches around, I think he’s about to hit me. Then he apologises, wants to know my name. I’m pissed off, don’t talk to him, I only told him my name 30 minutes ago on the veranda of the Brisbane Homestead Backpackers Hostel. Then he turns up the heat even more.

I can’t hear the rest. He blathered on about stealing things, so I lock everything in the car. First time travelling in 9 months, thank you! I take a shower at Brisbane’s Homestead Backpackers Hostel. Afterwards he’s halfway quiet. His MP3 player is so loud that I can recognise every song.

At five o’clock, drunk Brits come back to Brisbane’s Homestead Backpackers Hostel. Banging through the door. Fall down. A brief discussion with another drunk about which bed to fuck in at Brisbane’s Homestead Backpackers Hostel. Luckily she soon feels so sick that they both have to go out onto the veranda.

The junkie is even more annoyed than me. In the middle of the night, he gets into a loud verbal exchange at Brisbane’s Homestead Backpackers Hostel. After 30 minutes of silence, the Brit’s mobile phone rings. Five minutes break. Again. Five minute break. The junkie explodes. Throws the mobile phone out of the room at Brisbane’s Homestead Backpackers Hostel. That was his only good deed of the day. After that, the fire alarm continues to beep comfortably every five minutes at Brisbane’s Homestead Backpackers Hostel. But sleeping in is easy now.

Summary: Never again at Brisbane’s Homestead Backpackers Hostel! It’s not the Brisbanes Homestead Backpackers Hostel. Although maybe the nearby pubs attract so many idiots to Brisbanes Homestead Backpackers Hostel. The pool is empty and filthy, there’s only one knife in the kitchen.

The next morning I move into another room. I prepare my next few days online and go into town. The city centre is just 2km away. Brisbane is very beautiful, reminiscent of Sydney or New York. 1.5 million inhabitants, a colourful mix. Lots of old buildings right next to new skyscrapers. A nice mix.

I go to the old Town Hall, up its tower, wander through Queens Mall. Take a look at two galleries. The QUT has very interesting things, sometimes even I’m a bit disturbed. Then the Botanical Gardens in a bend of the Brisbane River. Back home again in air that is still over 30 degrees centigrade. I survive one more night at Brisbane’s Homestead Backpackers Hostel :-)

For the english readers:

I decided to do a translation of what i experienced at Brisbanes Homestead Backpackers Hostel as the second night was almost as beautiful as the first one. Brisbanes Homestead Backpackers Hostel is not too bad. Okay, they could allow people to calmly talk past 10pm on the veranda. The kitchen could be equipped with more than one knife. The pool could have some water in. You might even consider it to be enerving having to put all your stuff on the bed during day – or beeing thrown out.

That’s all not so bad at Brisbane’s Homestead Backpackers Hostel – would be no problem to coap with. My problem: neighbours and guests. The guests at Brisbanes Homestead Backpackers Hostel were almost all heavy alcoholics. No respect for the sleeping, aggressive, unfriendly. Two days of nonstop drinking. The rooms smell like cigarettes, beer and vomit. And more stinky sweat than in a New Zealand DOC hut after the 5th day of trekking.

The first night: to bed rounf midnight. The junkie in the lower dorm completely freaked out as i just put my laptop underneath the bed. Grabbed my arm, shouted in a dorm full of sleepers. Calm down, my word. But he didn’t. After some minutes he realised he was behaving like a freak. Excused. Asked for my name. I didn’t want to tell him again (did it already 30 minutes before). That’s when it got really bad, he almost hit me. A night at Brisbane’s Homestead Backpackers Hostel. Great.

Second night. The neighbours have some argument, something with beer. Loud but funny. In my next dorm: one drunk Brit who always texted to the girl under my bed. Surely with confirmation tunes on any key. She didn’t want to turn herr cell phone off, as it was her alarm the next morning. Me, begging for quiet. Answer: if yoo want to sleep, don’t go to a hostel.

I think different: I love hostels. And I hate Brisbane’s Homestead Backpackers Hostel. Dont make the same mistake! Stay away from Brisbane’s Homestead Backpackers Hostel!