Whose alarm is that? An albergue tale, and how not to star in it

I've never slept in a room with twelve strangers. What if I'm the one who does something embarrassing?

Then this story is for you. Every albergue (that's a pilgrim hostel) has alarm stories. This is my favorite. I wasn't in that dorm. Nobody who tells it ever was. So read it as a tale, not a news report.

The tale

Picture a full dorm, an hour before anyone planned to open an eye.

A phone goes off. It's the alarm people pick when they have a flight to catch and don't trust themselves.

Everybody is awake. Everybody is pretending not to be. It's the oldest game in the dorm: whoever moves first owns the problem.

One pilgrim decides to save the room. It can't be her phone. Hers is on silent.

She clicks on her headlamp, full beam, and sweeps the room like a lighthouse. Now the dorm has a detective. She checks the shelf. She listens to a backpack by the door. She looks hard at the man in the top bunk, who is asleep, or doing a very good impression.

The ringing is loyal. Wherever she goes, it goes.

She stops. She sits back down on her bunk. One hand goes, very slowly, to her own pocket.

The alarm stops.

"Found it," she says.

Headlamp off. Nobody says a word. Then, one by one, under eleven sleeping bags, eleven small screens light up. Just checking.

How not to star in it

That would be me. That would absolutely be me.

It could be anybody, which is why pilgrims who've slept in a lot of dorms keep passing on the same few habits.

• Alarm on vibrate. The alarm itself. Here's the trap she fell into: on an iPhone, silent mode doesn't silence the alarm. Open the alarm, set its sound to None, and leave vibration on. Then keep the phone where only you can feel it, under your pillow or in your sleeping bag (never while it's charging). Try it once at home. Some pilgrims use a watch or a wristband that buzzes instead.
• Do your morning the night before. Pack your bag and decide what you'll wear before the lights go out. If you leave early, carry everything out and finish getting ready in the hallway or the common room. Out there, zippers are nobody's business.
• Skip the plastic bags. They're the loudest thing in your pack. Cloth stuff sacks keep a secret.

And for the nights when somebody else is the alarm, there are earplugs, and a whole post about sleeping through the 2 a.m. snoring championship.

The kind ending

I like to think it was the man from the top bunk who poured her coffee at breakfast. He'd been cleared of all charges.

Everybody in that room knew that "on silent" doesn't always mean silent. Everybody in a dorm is one forgotten setting away from being her.

You'll make a small mistake in an albergue at some point. Everyone does. Most pilgrims are generous about it, especially if you laugh first.