Another guest urinated on my hostel bed while I was sleeping — how would you handle this?
I’m currently staying in a hostel dorm in Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and had a pretty disturbing incident last night. I’ve been covering the Balkans through this trip.
At around 2:45am I woke up and saw another male guest standing by my bed and urinating onto the mattress/bed while I was in it. Some urine fell on my foot also. I was pretty shocked and initially quite scared because I had no idea what was happening or whether it was deliberate. I said hello a few times but didn’t confront him loudly because he was seemed pretty scary in the moment.
There was also a race/nationality element to my initial fear. I’m Indian and he’s British, and in the first few seconds after waking up to a stranger urinating on my occupied bed, I genuinely wondered whether I was being deliberately targeted or whether there could be a racial motive. I want to be clear that I did not hear any racial slurs or see any other evidence that it was racially motivated. Once I understood how drunk he was, I started thinking it was probably a drunken accident rather than something targeted. But that initial fear was very real, and it was one reason I was too scared to confront him directly.
I contacted the hostel owner, who came over, woke/dealt with the guest, and moved me to another bed. The guest later apologized to me and said he had gotten very drunk after not drinking for a long time. The owner also told me he plans to charge the guest €125 for the damage/cleaning.
The owner did respond quickly, which I appreciate, but I’m still quite uncomfortable. Every time I see the guy around the hostel I feel nervous, even though I now think it was probably a drunken accident rather than something deliberately directed at me. I also don’t really feel comfortable sleeping in the same dorm as him anymore.
I paid €60 total for two nights. I’m considering asking the hostel owner for a refund—possibly the full €60, or at least the cost of the affected night—because of the disruption, loss of sleep, and the fact that I woke up to someone literally urinating on my occupied bed.
A few questions:
- Would you ask for a refund in this situation, and if so, how much would you consider reasonable?
Would you insist on being moved to a completely different dorm rather than simply another bed in the same room?
- Would you report something like this to the police, or does the fact that he was extremely drunk, apologized afterward, and the owner dealt with it make that unnecessary?
- Does my initial fear that I could have been racially targeted sound relevant to mention, even though I now have no evidence that race actually motivated what happened?
- How would you deal with feeling uncomfortable/scared around the person afterward?
- I have photos of the aftermath and the owner personally came to the room, so there’s no dispute that the incident happened.
I’m not trying to turn a drunken mistake into some huge legal case or payday. I’m mainly trying to figure out what a reasonable response is, because waking up to this was genuinely frightening and I’m not sure what I should expect from the hostel now.