Onion skins and Easter eggs. Eco friendly DIY colouring

Ester is only a little more than a week away and I am sure just like most hostels ours will be full of backpackers and other funny creatures looking for a good time and maybe even some Easterly fun.
Here is my one of my favourite things to do in a hostel (or where ever else I am) for Easter.

Colouring Easter eggs. Of course you can just get out the arts and crafts box (you don't have one? EVERY HOSTEL NEEDS ONE!) and let everyone be creative and see what they come up with. Or you can buy die and dip the eggs into that and have the classic shades of Easter eggs.
My favourite way to colour eggs though, is one I learned from my late grandmother: Onion skins! It's cheap, different, it's eco friendly and so DIY!

How you ask? Pretty easy actually. When being boiled the skins release the pigment, that makes them brown and turn the eggs a really pretty shade of red-ish brown. But here is the step by step guide:

Collect the dry brown onion skins for a while, depending on how many eggs you want to die you may want up to a small shopping bag full of skins. Make sure you store them in a basket or something similar airy that will prevent the skins from growing mold, should there be any moisture left in them. If you're living or working in a hostel it's pretty easy get your hands on that many onion skins. Just ask around, let people know what your are up to, maybe even organise an onion soup competition or make "tarte du flambet" for everyone (yum!).

You will also need some flowers, leaves and maybe grass blades as well as a pair of tights (they can be cheap or even old, since their going to be boiled don't worry too much about germs). Yes, they will survive the boiling water.

Carefully take your raw eggs and place flowers, leaves and grass blades on your eggs. I usually just put them on one side which is going to be the front, but if you want you can put them all around the egg.

Now comes the fiddly part: cut off a piece of your tights and wrap it tightly around the entire egg. Tie the ends together, but remember, be careful the egg is still raw. Where the knot it sitting you will get a pretty cool thai die effect.

Once all your eggs are decorated and covered in tights, place the eggs in a large pot, add the onion skins and cold or lukewarm water and bring the whole thing to boil. Since you probably want hard boiled eggs, let the whole thing boil for about 8 minutes. Stir the whole thing every now and then, so all sides of your eggs get a bit of colour. Be careful not to get any of the onion water on your clothes since it might leave stains you won't get rid of.

Take out the eggs and hold them under cold water for about 30 seconds. That will make it easier to peel them later on and to touch them to get off the tights. Which is my favourite part, because until the tights and flowers are off you never know how your eggs turned out.

If you want to make them nice and shiny you can rub some oil or butter on them. 

Advent Calendar for the hostel

I've lived in hostels for a few years now and I usually don't make it home to my parents for Christmas because I am busy working at the Christmas market here in Edinburgh. However things are different this year and I have a lot of time on my hands. I am still not going home for Christmas because the plain tickets cost more than I can afford. So I am using my time, doing all the things I didn't have time for the last couple of years: baking biscuits, decorating the tree, drinking mulled wine and making decorations for the hostel. 

One thing I already wanted to do last year but didn't have the time for was crocheting an Advent Calendar. In case you are from a country where they are not very common: they have 24 bags or doors, one for each day from 1st to 24th December and are meant to make the time until Christmas a little sweeter for children. They are a big thing in Germany and I don't know a single child in Germany that doesn't have one. Even nurseries have one where every child gets their turn to open one door or bag or parcel. Over here in the UK the simple ones with wee doors behind which you find a bit of chocolate are the norm and I think most kids here have one of those as well. 

When I was a child however most kids I knew also had one that the parents or grandparents would fill for them with little toys, sweets, chocolate, useful things for school or the child's latest obsession (in my case stamps from all over the world at some point). 

And so this year to show a little tradition from my home country but also to simply make it a little more Christmassy I am the one making an Advent Calendar for the (hostel)kids.

First I crocheted 24 little bags. Mine are all kinds of different sizes, since I used a lot of left over yarns and depending on their strength I had to adjust the number of stitches in the bottom row. There are little gaps in the second row from the top for a string so I can close the bags and attach them to the fire place. Since it is really close to 1st December and you might not have enough time to crochet 24 bags, You could also use felt instead, because it's really easy to work with and saw together. 

Then I got really thin craft foam sheets and used a biscuit cutter as a stencil. The advantage with those is that they leave a clear imprint on the foam but you don't have ugly marker stains on your stars and even, if you screw things up a little when you write the numbers on the stars you can just turn them around and trz again. With the stencil the stars don't have a "bad side".

With a simple black marker I wrote the numbers on the stars and glued those with regular liquid glue to the little bags. 

And I used simple ribbon for wrapping presents as sting to close the bags. It is cheap and looks festive. I am sure you all know the trick to make it curly, don't you? 

This is what the finished bags look like. 

And here they all are. I also crocheted a band to hold all the bags. That way I don't have to use thump tags for every single bag. Instead I tied them with the ribbon to the band. They are not in order which makes the search for the right bag a little more exciting. 

Molly is already looking forward to 1st December, when we open the first bag. 

recycle rug

Here at the hostel people quite often leave things behind: cameras, shoes, toiletries, jewelery and a ton of clothes. Most of the time our 70l bin with lost and found clothing is overflowing with unwanted or forgotten items. Every now and then we go through that bin and everyone can have what ever they want. That way I have ended up with quite a few free outfits. And when we're sure that there is no one who wants these clothes, not previous owners not staff members, we take them to one of the many charity shops in town.

I am generally a big fan recycling, my mom always made sure everything ended up in the right bins to the point where here at the hostel I sometimes take things out of the wrong bin and put them in the right one (very German I know). But I also like the idea of reducing rubbish by reusing things.
In school we were taught to use reusable lunch containers and bottles, as a kid my mom would drag me to car boot sales or flea markets and a lot of my clothes were second hand. Today half my wardrobe still comes from charity shops, second hand markets or the lost and found bin in the hostel.  

And now I have found a way to reuse some of the unwanted lost and found clothes, reduce rubbish and combine them with my crafts. I cut the old t-shirts into long strips and with a really big crochet hook I make new items out of them. The first one being a rug, but there are so many things they can be used for. I am already planning the next projects and since I worked on my rug while working the front desk, there are already other people who are interested in items made from old T-shirt, yay!

The first ever hostel

 Whenever I tell people at home or even sometimes here in the UK, that I live in a hostel, they are astonished and can't really imagine what it's like. Especially in Germany where the concept of hostels is relatively new (apart from the classic youth hostel) it is very hard for my friends and family to understand why I choose and like this kind of life (most of the time). I am not even sure, if I chose it or if it cose me. It just happened and I am okay, quite often even happy with it.



It all started in Ireland in January 2005. I had spend the last couple of months of 2004 as an Au Pair in Ireland in Co. Claire somewhere in the middle of nowhere. There was no shop, no pub! and the next bus station with a regular bus was 2 miles away. Apart from my host family I had little contact with the locals and spend almost every night in front of the telly and was terribly lonely. So when Christmas came the family and I decided to part ways. I would go home and spend the holidays with my friends and family and come back three weeks later to move in with the only friend I had in the near by city of Limerick and find a job and do my own thing.



There was just the little issue that I was not officially registered at Silvina's (my friend) flat and the office that gives out the PPS numbers (Social Security Number which is the one legal requirement I needed to work in Ireland) needed a proof of address from the landlord. The good thing was that I had a friend in Galway who is also German and had moved to Ireland 2 years before me and I knew he'd be able to help me.



 So I phoned him up and he told me to come to Galway and we'd take care of it together. And that was the first time I sat foot into a backpacker hostel. I am not even sure, if I stayed there this time around, I may have even stayed at my friend's house but it was then that I decided to stay in Galway not in Limerick.

Galway City Centre

Why you ask? First of all Galway is just such a wee gem of a city. It is directly on the coast, you literally walk 5 minutes from the main shop street to the beach, there are buskers (street performers) everywhere and there is just such a lovely alternative scene that I really loved. Limerick on the other hand is rough, pretty ugly and just not very friendly. But the moment when I finally made my decision was when I was sitting at the office to apply for my PPS number again. While I was sitting there and waiting for my turn a guy came in and like in a rom-com or a romance novel, I just knew, he was special and that I wanted him. I know how this sounds, but there is really no other way to describe it. Seeing him made me move to Galway and into the hostel, since it was the cheapest accommodation in town and my friend didn't have enough space to let me stay at his place. I knew I might not even see "my guy" again, but there were so many other great people and so much going on that made me sure I'd be happier in Galway.

the hostel back then

The hostel as it turned out was a dump, but I loved it. It occupied the three top floors of a four story building, with the common areas on the first floor and the dorms in the two top ones. It had a total of 58 beds with 8-10 beds in each dorm, a kitchen, a dining room and a TV room. That doesn't sound so bad, does it? But the condition the hostel was in... there was always something leaking, sometimes it would drip in the TV room, the water from the bathrooms came running down the bottom stairs, because some pipe was leaking and for a while you couldn't use the kitchen sinks because the whole kitchen would flood. Nobody liked going into the backyard where the bins where located because there were rats, probably from the canal that was flowing past the back of the building. I think that was one also of the reasons why the shops below the hostel were abandoned. The showers and toilets were gross with mold everywhere and no proper toilet paper dispensers.

that's how things got fixed

The manager lived in the hostel and got payed 40 Euros a day cash in hand and was only around a few hours a day. There were no locks on the doors and only one lock with with a code on the front entrance. (By the way I looked it up online and it seems in much better condition now...)

two of my room mates

But even though the building was in really bad condition some of the people I met there will stay with me forever. I don't exactly remember all the people I met since I went back a few times and people came and went. But I remember I really quickly moved into room No. 6 which had the coolest people in the hostel. Most of them were Spanish speakers (Argentinian, Bask, Catalan, from Andorra and a guy from Italy who also spoke Spanish). There were also a bunch of Polish people in the hostel, a French men, a guy from New Zealand and many more. And even though we were all from VERY different backgrounds and there for different reasons, we were one of these typical dysfunctional hostel families. We lived, partied, worked and even fought together. I learned my first bits of Spanish, I started making money with busking, I improved my English quite a bit and I learned so much about myself.

 There is only one person out of all of these people that I am still in contact with and that's because he also lives in Edinburgh now but I still remember a lot of people from back then and so many special moments that would never have happened had I not moved into that hostel. I even met my mystery guy from the office again. But I am not sure I'll ever share that story...

the Fringe is over - halleluja!

Today is the last day of the Fringe. A lot of shows have already finished others have their last show tonight, but you can already see and feel that it's over. Today most of our short term guests checked out this morning and tonight a lot of beds will stay empty for the first time in about a month. And it feels good, like we can finally catch our breath. Don't get me wrong, the Fringe is a fantastic event, but it is also exhausting, especially if you live and work right in the middle of it.

The first thing that's different is the amount of people. They are everywhere and there are way too many of them. Just going to the supermarket is a challange, because you have to dodge tourists every two metres, you unintentionally photo bomb someone at least once a day, because you can't be arsed to wait till their done (at least I can't) and it just takes way longer to get where you want to go.

And with the people comes a ton of noise. There are buskers everywhere and they are not always that good, sometimes you want to give them money so they'll stop playing. Of course there are really good ones, too, but I am not always in the mood, for Spanish flamenco or Scottish bagpipes.
Since the military tattoo is one there are fireworks almost every night and sometimes you just forget and you get a little scare when it suddenly sounds like world war III is just up the road. Not to mention the army's jets flying above your house... But my least favourite noise are yelling partying people. Right in front of my window is a landing that leads to the flats above me and almost every night I have a bunch of kids out there yell-talking like it wasn't 4am and everybody else was their beds trying to catch some Zs. Disrespectful little twats!

I am also tired of working until 6.30am. Tonight is the last night, I have to do an all-nighter and you wouldn't believe how glad I am. It was fun in the beginning, because it was nice having the common area all to myself in the wee hours and all the time in the world to get the cleaning done but now I am just tired and looking forward to the shorter shifts. Also, I somehow don't seem to manage to get more that 5-6 hrs sleep at the moment and it's catching up with me, might be the noise. All I want to do is crawl into bed or even better go on a holiday on a deserted island (with a lot of sun!). 

Well the island is actually an option, maybe not with sun, but because I have worked so much I have a bunch overtime hours, which I can use in any of our other hostels. And we have one on the Isle of Skye. SOUNDS LIKE A PLAN!!!

Oh what a night

When the kids asked me  earlier on, if I wanted to make this story into a blog post I declined. But that was before the encore...

As a night porter it is my job to kick everyone out at 11 pm who doesn't stay here, as in guests' friends or former longtermers visiting their old pals. But it also means that I have to try to keep people from sneaking into the hostel, thinking they could crash here for free or hook up with their latest pub/club conquest.

There are several reasons for this. The biggest reason is simply health and safety. Every guest has to sign into a book, so we can keep track of, who is here and which bed they are in. In case there should ever be a fire we can easily track who made it out and who didn't. Sounds horrible, I know. And imagine that scenario and we had more bodies than people from our register missing. We'd be fucked!
Of course it also is just plain bold sneaking in and trying to get free accommodation. As hard as it sounds but we are trying to run a business here!

So tonight one of our guests came home with a girl. He has been staying here for a while so I new his face, but didn't recognize her so I asked her for her ticket (it's a little card that proves that they are staying here) and it turned out he had give her his ticket, trying to sneak her in. BUSTED! I told her, that she couldn't be here after 11 pm and that she had to leave. When she asked, if she could use the loo, I told her she could, but that if she wasn't out of the hostel in 10 minutes, I would come and find her and kick her out.

10 minutes went by and there was no trace of her, so I went looking. They weren't in his room or bed, there was no one in the fire exit, so the last possibility was the bathroom. This hostel doesn't have many places you could hide in. Sure enough when I entered the boys bathroom I heard voices out of one of the cubicles. I banged against the door, telling them that she had to get out of the hostel or I would call the cops. That threat works every time.

Of course she tried to make up all kinds of excuses why they were together in the cubicle in the boys' bathroom. Yep, I am sure all you guys did is talk.
On her way out of the hostel, she complained that this wasn't a nice hostel and so on. I am sorry, but if I tell you that you are not allowed to be here and that all you could do was pee and then get out, and you lock yourself in the bathroom with your new boytoy than NO, I am not fucking nice!

Some of my kids (that's what I call other longtermers) had heard what was going and were now sitting in the reception area and as soon as I was done escorting them out, they burst into giggles. It didn't help when they went for a smoke and found the condom he obviously had lost on the stairs... more laughter.

Of course no one would look at him or even talk to him, when he came back... who knows where they went to shag...too awkward.

That was the main act, and I thought at that point it was all of the excitement, one night could bring. But I was wrong.

One of my other jobs is to clean the common areas of the hostel: kitchen, lounge and bathrooms. No problem, I've done that a few hundred times but guess who was sleeping in one of the showers? Yep, boytoy (he seems to have knack for bathrooms)!

At first I thought it was someone else, because there had been two really drunk boys and I was concerned one of them might puke. So woke him up to find out, if he was so drunk he worried about puking or if he just had locked himself out. Imagine my shock when it turned out to be boytoy! He of course wasn't happy to see me either, he was probably still pissed at me for cock blocking him and on top of that I woke him up. Buy he'll thank me in the morning, because he won't have a stiff neck or a sore back from sleeping on the hard floor in the way to short shower cabin.

An even if he is pissed off with me now, I was just doing my job buddy!

a life of goodbyes

Life as a traveler is beautiful. The things you see and learn and the people you meet... it's hard to describe, if you have never traveled. Your mind has to open up, if you want to enjoy the ride, otherwise you just keep comparing what you see and do to what you already know and can't appreciate the fact, that although something is different it can also be good, especially when it comes to people. Because everyone has a different cultural socialization, not only depending on where they or their parents come from but on many different factors.

I think for a lot of travelers this is a natural process and they end up with friends from all over the world. And just by hanging out with people from other countries you can learn so much about the culture and the history of other countries. These are the kind of lessons no book, no teacher, no school could ever teach you.

And with some of these people you become really good friends. You travel with them for a while or share a dorm, you meet them at the kitchen table of your new hostel or the pub crawl and meet up again the next day or you might have surfed their couch or you're both working at the same shitty bar, because you ran out of money. No matter how you've met and how long you've known each other but with some of them you click in a beautiful way that makes you smile just thinking about them. It doesn't even have to be in a romantic way. You just love hanging out with them and getting to know them. And you become friends, like the best of friends. Friends you never ever would have met, if hadn't gotten on that plane and left home to go on an adventure. And for a while these new friends are part of that adventure.

But since you, maybe even both of you are on the road it means that you will part eventually. It's just the way it is as a backpacker. You move on, to see new exiting places and meet new people. And you have to say goodbye to the people you've met. Sometimes that part seems to be hardest when you're  traveling. You wish you could just shove your new friends in your backpack and take them with you but the only way you will be able to stay in contact with them is through the internet. I hate to say it, but thank god for Facebook. Over time you lose contact to them. Their faces become blurrier in your mind and the moments you've shared are not as clear in your memories as they once were, eventually you even forget some of those people. 

But a few of these friendships and relationships might last. I know a few people that have met at one hostel or another and they are still friends, still talk online, skype a lot and visit each other every now and then, even though they are continents apart. I know people that have become lovers, are still together and even might get married and have children one day - or already have. Some of these people are from the same country, some are from different continents, but somehow they have found a connection despite all differences... they would have never met, if they hadn't been traveling.

There are a lot of people I have met along the way and had to say goodbye to over the years and there will be many more. Sometimes it is brutal, because they've really become loved ones. And I wonder what they are up to now and if I will ever see them again, if they ever think of me...

My hostel romance

You know, sometimes things just happen... weird things that are really cool at the same time. Things you'd never have thought possible. For example the other day one of our longtermers agreed to get a strip of his leg waxed, just to experience what it feels like. So that same day I got the cold wax strips out, so he could make good on his promise to try it. But since these things come in pairs (2 always stick together), we had to find another willing guinea pig. It really didn't take long and a second guy maned up, saying he couldn't let a brother suffer alone. After surprisingly little screaming on their part they now have matching hairless rectangles on their legs. Since one of them always wears shorts we are kind of waiting for him to get sun burned just in that little spot.

Today something similar happened. A day or two ago some of us girls somehow got the idea to turn our boys into Emos. You know the newer version of a goth, with usually a lot of eyeliner, black clothes and funny hair that is spiky in some parts and straightened in others. And to my surprise ALL of them agreed.

And I wonder what makes people do such things, because for some of them it seems such a drastic change and the girls really had to get into their personal space to paint fingernails, put the makeup on their faces and straighten their hair.

Of course like so often with such questions it isn't easy to answer, it may be boredom and events like that are simply a distraction or as they would say, something to do. But you still have to be comfortable enough with the people around you to let them get that close to you. And closeness might be one of the answers to that actually. Most of the people involved have been here for a couple of months and know each other really well. In fact they seem to be doing everything together: some of them work in the same place, they go out together, they have meals together, quite often they hang out in the common area all day, we have some musicians in the group and if one of them has a gig at least a hand full of them come to support them. So there is a huge amount of trust between them.

On the other hand, there were a couple of shorttermers, as in people who only stay for a few nights, who joined the fun. So it can't just be the fact that "the kids" (that's what I call the longtermers) were bored and they were comfortable enough with each other to do that. I am not sure, maybe it's just fun to dress up and do silly things, slip into different roles and try a different version of ones self.

What ever it may be, here are a few more pictures. And if you have an answer to my question, you are welcome to leave a comment....

around the world

I have friend. Her name is Shannon. She is from Canada. She used to live in the hostel. She has a blog, too. She talks about hostel life, too. And traveling in general. She's been on the road since February now. In Europe, Israel and Morocco.She takes lots of pretty pictures. Sometimes I even end up in some of them.

Here's the link:

http://travellingcanuk.blogspot.co.uk/

Have fun!

all my children

In a lot of hostels they distinguish between people who just stay for a couple of nights and people who stick around for a few weeks, months or in my case even years. You hear different terms in different hostels but they all describe more or less the same thing. One hostels called people like me weeklies, because we would pay our rent on a weekly base instead of daily. The hostel I am staying in now calls them longtermers. I think the word explains itself.
Us longtermers usually get to know each other pretty well after a wee while and often become some sort of dysfunctional family, specially in the smaller hostels.

The people in my hostel seem very tight at the moment. They all arrived around the same time, they are about the same age and they seem to enjoy each others company a lot.
I don't really feel like a part of that group, since I am a bit older, have been in the hostel a lot longer and I really don't enjoy the pubs and clubs they go to on a regular base. Also, I just don't drink as much anymore... But in a way they are my kids.
I am the night porter in the hostel, which means I usually work, when they drink and party, so more often than not I have to tell them to be quiet, wash the dishes they leave behind, kick their friends out who don't stay at the hostel and every now and then I have to clean up after them when they had to much alcohol.
It's a bit like they are on a never ending school trip and I am one of the teachers.
Don't get me wrong, they are a lovely bunch and they make up for all their little faults by making you tea when you're sick, lots of cuddles and sometimes simply being a bunch of funny loonies.

And just like children you can make them happy or calm them down by giving them something to do. One day for example of "my kids" was quite a bit hyper and annoying everyone, especially the manager so I simply gave him some paper and pencils and he was happy drawing away for an hour.

Another way to entertain the kids is the massive dress up box. Just open that thing and start putting hats on people or maybe put a pile off clothes in the middle of the room and you can be sure they will come up with the weirdest combinations. Quite often some kind of cross-dressing is involved.
Here are some examples:

 

 

Crochet and the hostel

As I said in the beginning, this blog will mainly be about my crafting and hostel life.
And the other day I realized that my crochet business probably would have never happened if it wasn't for the hostel.

I did learn the basics of crochet and knitting in primary school. I must have been eight or so. I remember crocheting a little purse just with chain stitch and single crochet. That was all I knew until a couple of months ago.

My grandmother and my mother are both geniuses when it comes to these kinds of crafts, but I wasn't too interested in any of it, maybe because I thought it was just something for old people (boy was I wrong). They would spend whole afternoons bend over magazines discussing knitting and sawing patterns while I preferred to watch TV.

So in June 2012 I got a Kindle as a birthday present, since living in a hostel meant that my bunk bed looked like a library.
My holy new device needed a cover. Something that would protect it, when it would travel with me everywhere. But I didn't want to spend £15 or so on the covers that were available at the time. That is a crazy amount of money for me. And I thought, that I would probably be able to make one myself. And so I did. I bought really cheap yarn and a hook and went to work. Remember, up until then I only knew chain and single stitch. It wasn't pretty and I am sure crochet experts would have frowned upon my work, but it served its purpose.

And I think it was around the same time, maybe a few months later that I was really broke and my purse broke and I didn't have the money to buy a new one. So for a while I only had a canvas bag that I had gotten for free somehow. But in my canvas bag I would always carry a ball for yarn and a hook. I don't know how long it took me but in the end I had crocheted pretty solid purse. It wasn't perfect, I had used different types of yarn and I think different hooks as well but boy was I proud to be able to produce something like that. It even went to Leeds Festival with me.

I wasn't happy with the colors 'though, so I started another one. And from there it went crazy. A hostel friend asked me, if I could make a purse for her. So I did. And the sign-in-book at reception needed a new cover, so I crocheted one. And then the same friend who asked me for a bag showed me a youtube tutorial about crochet and from there it got even crazier. I think the first thing I learned was a simple flower. And with that I learned a double crochet. Soon I discovered "bobwilson123" who is a crochet goddess and thanks to her I soon crocheted my first beanie (bobwilson123 youtube crochet channel). And that's when things got out of control. Hostel people kept asking me to crochet things for them all the time, to the point where I couldn't crochet fast enough and I had to ask people to at least pay for the yarn. And at some point I simply started charging for my time, too and they didn't even mind.

I still don't even make minimum wage, but I am happy about the fact that people actually love my stuff and ask me, if I could crochet this or that for them. I also don't feel like I am a pro yet, there is still so much to learn. With every new stitch, pattern or video I come across a whole new dimension opens up. I AM ADDICTED and I am not ashamed of it. At least I can make a little money out of my addiction...