Single-serving friend: (from the movie Fight Club) A "friend" you meet once, for example on a plane, and never see again.
"Tyler, you are by far the most interesting single-serving friend I have ever met."
Hostel life can be very similar. Everyone has just arrived or is about to leave. The people you hang out with today are moving on tomorrow. Every meeting starts the same way, 'Where are you from?', 'How long have you been in X?' , 'Where have you been?' And finally 'How long are you traveling for?'. You may not even exchange names, instead you create a nickname in your head, usually based on country of origin, or a particular trait or profession because names can be to difficult to remember if your drunk or meeting people 20 a day. Like Navy, a guy from California, on leave from the Navy to travel, I think his real name was Alberto. Or Varsity, the shorts she wore around the hostel had the word on the ass, that was easy to remember, never knew her real name as she kept to herself. Dario, the guy from my last post was named 'Swiss' in my head for a day or two.
Sometimes you're known collectively as the Aussies, the Irish boys, the Brazilians or whatever.
After several days it's your turn to move on and you're alone again, but usually not for very long.
Off to Krakow ,Poland. Prague's been good, I'll write more on that later.
.
