A better name for the typical Bed & Breakfast might be 'Room & Breakfast.' At a hostel, by contrast, what you get is precisely that: breakfast in the morning and a bed for the night. And in the next bed is your friend, your lover, your husband or wife, or a 17-year-old hoodlum from the UK who doesn't yet know that drinking 4 shots of absinthe, 3 of vodka, and downing two beers (not in that order) every night of the week is not a good way to initiate oneself into adulthood.

A quartet of such hooligans was crowding my room in Prague this week, and my consolation was knowing that my experience of them would be limited to a few minutes at either end of a long walking day. So it was with some surprise that I came across them in the foosball basement of a club here. They were shouting, ad humorous nauseam, "Chelsea! Chelsea! Chelsea!" (apparently a football team in England). We discussed the serendipity of their appearing at the same club, in the same foosball room as me and my travelling companion. In spite of their clear sobriety, I managed to best them in a game of foosball (a game whose name they couldn't seem to pronounce, substituting 'football'). [To those who may wonder: we played where goalie shots were worth a mere one, and a rule for in-and-outs was not called; fortunately no such rule came into play.] The game finished, they moved on to another raucous round of shouting "Chelsea," but not before promising to wake us at 4am for a beer and a game of cards.

Back at the hostel, at around 4:15am, I was just turning a page of "The Glass Essay" by Anne Carson when the kind fellows burst in.

UK17 A: Hey, aren't you the bloke from the club?

Narrator: Yes.

UK17 A: Hey, it's the bloke from the club!

UK17 B: The football player!

Narrator: After a fashion.

UK17 B: Hey, guys, it's the guy from the club!

UK17 A: Deutscheland, right?

Narrator: No.

UK17 B: Yeah, right. It's the bloke from the club. You played for Deutsche, yeah?

Narrator. No. American.

UK17 A: Yeah, but you played for Deutsche, right?

Narrator: Do you guys think you could keep it down a bit?

UK17 C: Hey, guys! It's the bloke from the club! Deutsche—

&c.

I wish the punters good luck in the liquor-soaked attempt at experience.