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Many incredible memories were created in my four months studying abroad and living in Florence. Some of the funniest though, involved the time-tested formula of alcohol + bladder control = hilarity! Check out the first tale of my EuroPEEan chronicles here, where I learned the age old expression pee on me once, shame on you. Pee on me three times, shame on me.

And now, for the next story in my epic travel abroad pee chronicles…

The Interlocken Hostel

I don’t know the normal make-up of a study abroad program, but the Florence program that I used through AIFS was 110 girls and only 18 guys.

Yep. It was awesome.

Well… almost awesome. In my experience, women are always better at planning. So I lucked out that my program was almost all women because I made friends with lots of them and they planned ALL of my trips. But the downside is that as a guy ruled by my reptilian brain, I often found myself unable to withstand the peer pressure applied by a group of determined girls.

And that is how I found myself in the Swiss town of Interlocken having just jumped out of a plane.

They bought the ticket, called me chicken when I said I was terrified of heights, and that was all it took. But the most memorable part of my trip to Interlocken was not the skydiving, but the night after at the hostel.

We spent €300 on skydiving,so we got a shared room in order to save money. It was myself and my four female skydiving study-abroaders in a room with 6 beds. Luckily, the five us were able to grab beds and nobody was slotted to take the 6th so we had a private room… or so we thought.

After a long day of jumping out of planes, we were heads down and lights out by 11pm and feeling great.

2am

The room was pitch black but I awoke to a bright light staring into my eyes and the barely perceptible outline of a human head floating underneath. Too terrified to react, I feigned sleep until the intruder moved on past my bed.

Fearing that we were being robbed, I was all set to tackle the man but just before I made my move, I realized I was not looking at a thief. It was a man wearing a miner’s light on his head, looking for a place to sleep, in a leopard thong.

Yes. A leopard thong. And for bonus points, he was stumbling drunk.

Realizing that this man was looking for an open bed and then realizing the only open bed was the bunk bed above me… I panicked.

Why did I panic?

Because there was no ladder… and as he came back to my bed and saw the one above me open… he placed his foot on my bed, with his crotch in my face, and threw himself on the mattress above me.

I closed my eyes, tried to ignore the raspy drunken snores from above, and drifted to back to an uncomfortable sleep.

3am

You know that little crack of space between the bed and the wall? This leopard-thong-wearing drunk had decided it would be enjoyable to dry-heave down it so that his hot breath was showering me in stank.

Enjoy that.

430am

It was all quiet from above and I had managed to sneak a few minutes of sleep, but now had to use the bathroom. Which meant rolling out of bed and standing up so that I would be at eye level with the menace above me.

Luckily it was too dark to see much and I was able to trip my way to the bathroom without incident.

But as I washed my hands and shut off the bathroom light, I heard a –

THUMP

Fear kept my feet locked to the floor as the seconds creeped by with me trapped in the bathroom. I KNEW that the noise I heard was my drunk bunkmate.

Had he fallen? Or even worse… was he awake?

435am

No more noises had followed that ominous thump so I finally felt safe enough to make a move towards my bed. But as I made my way back through the mountains of luggage from the girls, I saw something in my peripheral vision.

I froze.

To my left, not more than 10 feet from me, framed by the sliver of moon shining through the one window in the room, was the silhouette of a man. Not any man, but a leopard-thong wearing man.

And in his drunken stupor he was pouring bottled water onto the floor.

“Why are you pouring wa–” is what I started to say.

But then I was interrupted by my friend Lauren, from the other top bunk of the neighboring bunk bed, screaming:

“Not in my bag! It’s Prada!!!”

The lights were flipped on and there I am… in the middle of the room looking at Lauren getting a way-too-clear view of our drunk 6th roommate peeing a steady stream of alcohol fueled pee into her newly purchased Prada bag.

And here is where I also learned the downside of traveling with girls. While a guy might find a drunk thong wearing guy peeing into your friends bag to be HILARIOUS… a girl might not.

Which led to me laughing maniacally while the five girls I traveled with alternately yelled at the still-peeing offender and then me for being such an unsympathetic jerk.

But come on… how do you not laugh at that?