COVER STORY / The Young And the Restless. SEE SIDEBARS: 1) CLIFF NOTES. 2) Keeping in Touch With Home Along the Way-(see end of text ALL EDITIONS

• Published in: Newsday
• Main Author: Andrew Friedman. Andrew was an intern for LI Life during the summer of 1996
• Format: Newspaper Article
• Language: English
• Published: Long Island, N.Y Newsday LLC 16.03.1997
• Edition: Combined editions

Picture me with a black backpack the weight of two watermelons digging rivets into my shoulders on a street in Kensington, desperately asking brusque shoppers for directions, shuffling the pages of my 600-page guidebook for a clue. So far, London seemed like a giant mall, but soon enough I strolled through a verdant park full of dogs and up to the stately door of my hostel (the best of my trip), in an old manor. Other former students on other post-college trips flooded the poor rumpled Englishman at the desk, but I managed to obtain a key and found a room honeycombed with bunk beds. The accents of young guys boasting about exploits descended upon me: A Brazilian complained that Parisians ate less than birds; a pompous kid from Berlin finessed a group of Japanese boys with rock and roll stories ("My band plays American indie-rock. You know? Sonic Youth? Dinosaur Jr.?"); a Finnish pair mumbled in a corner. It was like walking from complete silence into the Tower of Babel, and it followed me to the decadent toast-and-eggs breakfast the next day, which spoiled me for the rest of the breakfasts on my trip. Hostel breakfasts anywhere but London fulfill the double entendre of their names; all hard salami and bad coffee.