Paula's Supposed Comfy Corner: Uncomfortable, Alone, and Locked In
The screwdriver is bending at the middle, but the chisel is holding. I guess that's what chisels are supposed to do. "Well, this is maybe not exactly what a chisel is supposed to do", I think as the two lengths of metal are jammed into the left side of the doorframe, levering one of the arms of the metal plate to bend around the dead bolt. The chisel is holding its shape, but I hope I'm still going to be able to use that screwdriver after this.
But then, I think. A bent screwdriver, even a bent chisel, is a small price to pay for getting out of this mess.
The power drill lies sideways on the floor, the battery flashing dead. It winks a weak LED salute to the frame of the door that it has just met with such driving intimacy. Â The door frame grins a fray-toothed splintering smile back. The two Austrian girls through the peephole have abandoned hope and have gone for their third cigarette and second drink across the street.
Meanwhile, the group of seven Croatians, a few of which happen to be tall, mean-looking dudes are getting drunker and louder and ever closer to jumping out the window to answer the call of clubbing in Berlin. It is a hard call to resist at the best of times, and seems even more irresistible with a fall of fifteen metres between you, the ground, and then the techno. Perfect bravado story fodder.

Need a dead bolted door broken down from the inside? I can now do this given a fully charged power drill and a few levering tools. Promise I will charge less than an emergency locksmith. *
The Work Exchange listing at Paula's Comfy Corner in Berlin jumped out at me while I was backpacking through Prague, staying of course at a hostel. In the last few years I have stayed at more hostels, guesthouses, and homestays that I can count. These kinds of places are more familiar to me now than having my own apartment. Immediately 'this has my name on it' vibes jangled through my brain. I applied right away, and within a day I had been accepted to do a month-long volunteer 'internship'.
Paula's Comfy Corner Hostel is more like an extended homestay than a standard '10-bed bunk' hostel. As I would come to know, there were several very strange things about the running of this hostel. The first was that neither of the managers were actually on site. In fact, they did not even live in Berlin, but rather in Blackpool, England. Communications were held mainly over a shared Google chat document, where the only way one could know who one was 'talking' to was by the text color with which they chose to represent themselves, and as I would later find out, the number of passive-aggressive smiley faces used in one paragraph. I would come to learn that the only person I would ever actually speak to was Paula, while Anastasya, the second manager stayed hidden behind the shadows of her magenta text. Had the other hostel worker not met Anastasya in person herself, I would not have believed she actually existed and was not simply a second manifested personality.
*
I assess. I have drilled away the wood of the doorframe covering the deadbolt of the lock. The metal plate against which the deadbolt would be pushed if someone wanted to break in has been bent around the deadbolt (with screwdriver and chisel) but it is still missing just a few millimeters. Those few millimeters lie between everyone on the inside wanting to get out, and everyone out on the outside wanting to get in. The grass is always greener.
I remark to myself, philosophically, but entirely unhelpfully, that this is what a door does. It separates. An impermeable membrane that keeps things inside inside, and outside outside. And how strong are these borders, between apartment inside, and the malicious outside. Dead bolt strong. That's how much we fear the outside getting in. That we need to install something that effectively guarantees what is outside can definitely not come inside without our permission.
Of course I'm having these thoughts because I'm wishing to high heaven right now that I could just use my old grade seven trick of sticking a straightened out paperclip into the hole in the bathroom doorhandle to surprise a friend on the toilet. If only it were that easy.
Instead, past midnight, I've rummaged through the hostel storage cupboard to dig up a battery powered drill entirely devoid of any battery power whatsoever, and the battery packs and charger nowhere to be seen. I've also been made aware of a 'silver bullet' drill bit that I can use as a last resort to pretty much drill the shit out of anything I need to. Namely, the dense metal of a lock barrel.
I am still processing the situation, and trying not to pay attention to the strong potential consequences of being unsuccessful at getting the door open. It is my first night, indeed, my first six hours at this homestay hostel in Old Moabit, Berlin. The other two hostel workers have gone for drinks, and I am here holding the fort. Holding the fort indeed, while drilling down the door from the inside. I realize soon after trying to open the stuck door that I am the only person in the position of doing anything. The two other hostel volunteers are stuck outside, and the managers don't even live in the country of their property. The hostel is entirely run by the volunteers, save for being told who is arriving and leaving that day. A wonder that nobody has run off yet with the money kept in a cookie tin, locked in a flimsy cupboard.
*
The second, and what I found, weirdest part about the hostel arrangement was that the volunteers sleep in the same room as the guests. That meant that after greeting the guests and taking their money (cash only of course, like any suspiciously illegitimate business), showing them around, and answering questions, that volunteers would subsequently enter the room with the guests and then have to introduce themselves as their roommates as well. One simply had to hope that guests would not see this as an opportunity to take advantage of being in such close quarters to female hostel workers.
While generally I thrive on weird situations and invite them with vigour into my life, after a few days of being both receptionist, housekeeper, city guide, and roommate to all the travellers passing through, I started to wonder why the two to three hostel workers who were there at a time could not be allocated a room shared amongst themselves. The answer was of course, because it would cost more than putting them into the larger dormitory. And while the hostel was being run for very low overhead, as nobody was getting paid save for food expenses, it did not seem necessary to the managers to ensure that the volunteers they depended upon entirely to carry on their business could have a place where they felt comfortable to rest away from the buzz of guests. Even while sleeping in the cheapest dormitories in India, Myanmar, Thailand, and China had I never encountered this management strategy for saving a few euros a night.
Naturally when the larger six-bed dormitory was booked out, the volunteers would have to pack up their things and move to another room. This meant that every few days, we would be displaced into another sleeping arrangement. The bags under my eyes could tell the story of how I slept during those weeks. And that's without mentioning the bedbugs.
*
Whatever happened with that door? Read on in Part II.
A preview:

Is this bent piece of metal the 'key' to our lock problem? Read on in Part II