End of Melbourne (for now)/Lachlan's Hostel Reviews 2

Oops! It's been way too long since I last updated again! Hahaha wee!

Anyways hows it going Blog Readers, it's your boy Lachlan back at it again with a new Blog Update for ya. Last time I left off with some EMOTIONAL GARBAGE but never fear, my emotions are BACK and STRONGER THAN EVER so please do not worry :) This time we're starting off with the

SILLY UPDATE LIGHTNING ROUND!!!

But anyways, now that we're all caught up on the silly parts of my life, it's time once again for

LACHLAN'S HOSTEL REVIEWS PART 2: THE VILLAGE MELBOURNE

LOCATION:
The location of The Village is actually one of the only decent things it has going for it! It's right downtown (or CBD as I learned) and a 5 minute walk from Queen Victoria Market, this huge produce/meat/deli market that sells primo goods for way less than grocery store price. I really loved being able to just go out one night, and when the fun stopped to be able to simply walk 10 minutes to my room instead of having to find a tram or get an Uber. Great stuff, 9/10 :)

PRICE
Price was reasonable. I wasn't angry about it. Wasn't too happy either, especially for what we got, but that's everywhere right now. 5/10.

FACILITIES
Alright here's where the problems start! Let's keep being positive and talk about the kitchens. They were really big, quite clean, and almost always had pots/utensils available. Awesome! Now everything else. While the bathrooms were kept clean, they were small! Really small! They were located privately in each room, which sounds great, but when it's 6 people to a room with 1 bathroom to share, it gets cramped really quick! Also despite the privacy, the bathrooms had no shelves. At the very least The Nunnery had hooks for bags or clothes, the Village gave you nothing and expected to cope. Thanks Village! If someone else was in the bathroom, you'd have to take your chances on the 1 SHARED WASHROOM ON THE ENTIRE FLOOR that usually had water and debris all over the place, or you'd have to take the elevator down to the lobby to use one of the 3 toilets available down there. Not cool. Some other upsides: There was a gym you could use free of charge. Sick! I never used it since my shoes would track mud everywhere, but the option was great! Laundry was also available, although you needed to supply your own detergent/powder, and for backpackers, a bigass box of detergent is the last thing I wasnt to be carrying. They also had a bar, which sounds really cool, but they pushed HARD to try and get you to use it, like, announce it on the loudspeakers on each floor and buzz you on your phone about it every night kind of hard. Wasn't even good for meeting people, but we'll get into that later. Also the reception/staff were annoying and kinda crap, they had a super frat bro vibe that I really didn't like, and were usually just away from the desk or generally unhelpful. After having a couple issues that needed staff support, I think 1 guy actually SORT of had my best interest in mind. Either way, extremely lopsided facilities, again, 5/10.

ROOMS
My room was nice and uncomfortable. It wasn't shitty, it was just, super uncomfortable. I stayed in a 6 bed room, and that room was NOT built for 6 beds, holy cow. It was mega cramped, the beds on either side barely allowing 2 people to walk abreast if you were slim. There was 1 big window with no screen and no other ventilation I could feel, so we'd have to crank the window wide open to avoid sweating like pigs in the cramped body heat of 6 people. Too bad though, because the window opened right above the entrance! Where the bar was! That was open until 1AM every day! Basically neither me or my friends I made, Ben and Sbona, got a proper sleep the whole time we stayed there. However, the beds themselves were comfortable enough and clean, there were outlets next to the beds that mostly worked, and it was not carpeted! But, one more thing holding the rooms back, is that the keys to get in were just an app on your phone. It was so god damn annoying having to play babysitter for my phone so it wouldn't die and I could just enter my room as I please at any time. Once when I was dog tired and lucky, I had to go down to reception to get the reset code for the door. I'm super glad I was early enough to catch the receptionist, otherwise I would have been knocking on the door, adding to the noise of my roommates just rying to sleep. I don't know why they couldn't just use codes in the first place, but I guess I'm not the hostel manager so who friggin knows. My hatred may be unjustified but it's MY review so I'm giving this stinker a 4/10.

BUILDING
The building felt like a friggin PRISON dude. It was a multi-floor hostel that felt relatively new, which was nice, but the layout was so crap. It almost kind of felt like an apartment complex, which was kinda nice at first, I'm not gonna lie. But then you realize they've done an absolutely TERRIBLE job optimizing their space. As I said before, the rooms are mostly all super small and cramped, which really sucks ass, but then the common areas are friggin MASSIVE, with these little islands of couches and tables that are still too far apart to have a real conversation with someone on. Not only that, since the bedrooms were on both walls, there was absolutely no natural light coming into the common areas, making them these dark, liminal hallways that are way too big for their given purpose and don't have the atmosphere to support their given purpose, making the whole place feel very anti-friend-making. The elevators, which were the main method of transportation as the stairs were for emergency exit only, were also terribly slow, and despite the building having about 5 floors full of people at any given time, there were only 2 of them, causing you to wait forever to catch anything. There was also a bar in the lobby that I also just hated the vibe of. To their credit, they did do some cool things like give out free beers to new people just arriving in Australia and try to help people integrate into groups more with little ice-breakers, but the whole vibe of it felt like a scummy way to keep you in their bar and drinking their beer (which they also lied about the price of on their flyers they just haven't updated for some reason). They'd play music way too loud to have a genuine conversation, and instead of fostering new people into groups/communities, the bar staff much rathered fraternizing with the regulars instead of doing what their seemingly intended goal was. Either way, the whole building was USUALLY pretty clean thanks a ton to the heavily unjustifiably disrespected cleaning staff who seemed like they hated their jobs every time I saw them (don't blame them, some people were absolute pigs in that hostel until the cleaning staff got to their crap), so thanks entirely to them, I'm giving the building once again a barely passing 5/10.

PEOPLE
I think this was probably the least friendly place I've stayed so far? For the first couple days I tried striking up conversations with some of the other people staying at the hostel, but everyone was for the most part staying totally in their own lane, shutting down casual conversation as fast as they could. That sucked bad at first, and I kind of took it way more personally than I should have, but it's all good now. I ended up getting really lucky and some people I knew from The Nunnery were also staying at the Village for a little bit, so we hung out a bunch and made the best time we could with the place. Overall, except for my friends from the Nunnery, the kinds of people you can find at the Village were a 4/10 for me, no one wanted to be cool and hang out except for like 1 British guy we met as a group and who played smash bros (shitty zoner main tho) and was really cool.

OVERALL If you don't really want to use your hostel to make any friends and just want a place to rest your head for the night, sure, the Village could be for you! It was not at all for me though , this place felt cold and unforgiving and I feel like if it was my first hostel in Melbourne it would have given me a way way worse first impression than The Nunnery, that's for sure. This place stinks, I wouldn't recommend it unless you're already in a group or are fine keeping to yourself for the most part, and it's getting a barely okay 5/10, screw that place.

Okay anyways that's enough hostel complaining for now. I think that's about gonna do it for now everyone! I'm gonna take this last little section to thank Thom for getting me to buy the first Horus Heresy book, that thing is SUPER fun to read, and I would also like to say I'm sorry to all my lovely friends whom I can't play games with, fellas if you're reading this I promise I'll get a sublet or something soon and we can PROPERLY play video games again and have a great time :)

Okay catch everyone on the flip side, I hope your day will be or has been AMAZING and stay safe ;) Love you all!