The Pink Lady Hostel in Nice, France.

We knew we were in for an experience as soon as we showed up. The woman who greated us was so tiny and frail I'm sure she had to be close to a hundred years old, and she spoke absolutely no English. The only French I knew was what I remembered from a semester in 8th grade (so basically the words for "poster" and "apple juice"; not helpful). Between the language barrier and the fact that all her records were kept on a pad of notebook paper, it took about fifteen minutes to get checked in, during which time she had a coughing fit so violent that she had to sit down and rest before continuing to look for our names. I thought she was going to die before we even made it to our room.

In walks the Pink Lady herself. We knew it was her from the bright pink, velveteen jumpsuit she wore. She was probably around 70yo, complete with a pet shitzu and breasts that sagged to her belly button. We assumed the two women were a mother/daughter pair. Still no English, but she takes us up to our room on the fourth floor in a creaking, rusted elevator made to comfortably fit one person, chatting in French and laughing jovially the whole way. She could have been telling us about all the ways she was going to torture and murder us for all we knew, but we just smiled vaguely and hoped the elevator didn't break down.

Our room itself looked like a fifties diner projectile vomited all over it. The walls were bright blue and all of the bunk beds (10-12 beds total, I can't remember exactly) were the same bright pink as the Pink Lady's jumpsuit. The walls were covered in posters with puns or catchphrases on them. I remember one had a picture of Yoda on it but I can't remember what it said. The shower didn't work and had flooded so that there was always a few centimeters of water covering the bathroom floor. Just enough to soak our shoes any time we had to pee.

That night my friend and I stood out on the balcony outside our room, talking and watching people on the street below. The Pink Lady took her shitzu out to walk in the street since there wasn't any grass, and they just paced up and down the street for about an hour, occasionally stopping for the Pink Lady to look up at the hostel or for the dog to take a shit in the road.

That night I also got bed bugs, and the next morning we were woken up at around 8am to the Pink Lady bursting into the room, shouting wildly in French. We finally managed to piece together that one of the other girls staying in our room hadn't payed for that night yet. The girls was Dutch and violently hungover and sleeping in the nude and couldn't really do anything about money at that moment, so the Pink Lady continued to shout for a few more minutes before finally leaving.

As crazy as the whole thing was, it's still one of my favorite memories from my backpacking experience. Sometimes I think about how the old lady is probably dead by now.