Staying at a sketchy two-star hotel in Budva, Montenegro. Never again.

I’m with my then girlfriend on a Euro trip during the summer of 2016. (23M, 21F)

We’re both overtired after a day of sightseeing and a rather long drive from Split, so we settle on the very first lodging we come across that offers parking. Its on the outskirts of town.

So we roll in late on a Friday night. The concierge is smoking a dart, looking like a character from an Edgar Allan Poe novel. He’s gaunt and pale and exudes the worst vibes you can imagine (leering at my girlfriend while showing us to our room with a wry grin plastered on his face). I pay cash upfront. The entire place reeks of cigarettes and mould, and it feels as though we are the only guests staying at the hotel. Against our better judgment, we decide to stay, after all ... it would only be one night, and its already super late.

We take a moment to admire the 70s style decor of our room and our exquisite view of another brutalist building through a dirty window. We both agree that we’re simply too tired to go out and explore the famed nightlife of the town. We lie down on top of the sheets on two separate single beds that are hard as rock to catch some much needed shut eye before yet another day of sightseeing. We even use articles of our own clothing as makeshift pillows, fearing the cleanliness of the ones we were provided with. I apologize profusely to her for my poor planning but she’s just happy to be off the road (driving can be rather tense in that area of the world, plus I’d gotten us lost a couple times along the way).

After about an hour of very low quality sleep, we awake to the sound of some astonishingly loud bass and the rumble of a riotous party taking place down the hall. It’s about 3 am at this point, so I walk down to the lobby of the building to ask if they have another room available for us, but there’s no one there. I mean absolutely nobody. Eerily empty.

I head back up to our room, and my girlfriend looks exhausted and frustrated. I know all of this is my fault, so I decide that I’m going to do the unthinkable and venture down the hall to politely ask our drunken neighbours if they wouldn’t mind quieting down a touch. After all, with the exception of the concierge, most of the other folks whom I’d encountered during this trip had been rather polite (no sarcasm here)

I walk over, and to my surprise, their door is wide open. Apparently these folks had also presumed that they were the only ones staying at the hotel.

I peer inside and see three very terrifying eastern-promises-mobster-looking guys who are covered in tattoos. Nobody is wearing any clothes. They are clearly either extremely high or belligerently drunk. Also inside the room are five naked women, clearly professionals, three of whom are dancing and two of whom going about their business. I freeze for a split second. One of the guys sees me through his periphery and then makes direct eye contact with me, stands up and begins moving towards the door. I’m already halfway down the hallway by this point and when I turn my head, he has emerged from his room, and is yelling angrily at me in his native language. I’m by no means interested in getting into a fight with this fella, so I bow my head down slightly and give him a sheepish half wave, (which I still use as a universal indication that I’m looking to avoid confrontation.) As I reenter my room, I hear his door slam shut.

I look at my girlfriend with all of the colour drained from my face, and exclaim, “we’re leaving right now”. No questions asked, she packs her stuff into her bag and we speed walk in the direction of the lobby. As we round the corner, and begin our descent down the stairs, I get a spidey sense that they’ve decided to follow us out. But by this point we’re straight up booking it to the car, and not looking back. I fumble the keys a bit but manage to get us the fuck outta dodge.

After that I bit the bullet and got us a four star room by the boardwalk for the following night.