written for Yahoo! Internet Life (RIP) in 2001

At the most wired hostel in Amsterdam, you don't just share bathrooms with fellow tourists -- you share a years' worth of smut and MP3s. For as little as $40 a night, an abnormal little guesthouse called Get Lucky [getluckyamsterdam.com] offers its backpacking clientele a computer and cable modem connection in every room. The combination of PCs and stoned tourists might hassle a less eccentric staff or the Ritz Carlton set, but the crowd at this crash palace seem to be adjusting just fine.

Get Lucky's provides a weird and funny map of the tourist psyche. Webcams monitor the reception area, the street outside, and the bar in its biggest double room. "Two times we caught guests having sex," reports Get Lucky's computer guru Friso Seyferth, even though the guilty parties had been told the cams were there.

Still, the staff has a hands-off attitude, only checking machines when there's a problem, says Seyferth. As a result, the average in-room computer offers a cluttered desktop, several instant messengers, and a diverse collection of MP3s and triple-X fare. "My tastes and those of our American backpacker guests differ," says Seyferth, "Mostly I don't like their porn and music." (Could he be referring to the gansta rap, "Sesame Street on Pot" parody, and boy bands recently spotted in the Napster folder?). Even though guests have been installing software, changing settings, and downloading questionable files since early 2000, Seyferth reports that, somehow, the beleaguered communal computers rarely need repairs.

To the staff, technology is more than a gimmick. They network the house themselves, with a Linux server, though they sometimes allow their most technically-inclined guests to fiddle with it. The front desk blasts MP3s from outlaw country singer David Alan Coe, freak rockers Ween, and Klezmer bands. Chatters are encouraged to talk to the reception area staff via MSN Messenger. Employees also produce an online, off-color "Real World" spoof, called ~The Surreal World~ [thesurrealworld.com] coming soon to public access television. The next guests caught with their pants down better hope they don't wind up on Dutch TV.