European Museum of the Year 2010.

[sister_luck]

You might wonder how we managed to get enough sleep?

We found this strategy worked wonders:

10 o'clock everyone had to be in their rooms with the noise level not above normal conversation. Which is difficult for groups of teenagers who have to discuss relationships, parents and body stuff. We get that, really we do, but you need to keep the noise down. (There was this one rude woman who didn't belong in a youth hostel at all because she expected the kids to be quiet even before the official bed tim.)

We took up our position in the corridor with our comfy chairs and when a room got too rowdy walked over and told them to tone it down. Of course, the downside to that is that we could have kept this up the whole night because the effect was rather short-lived. And teenagers don't tire easily. What they don't like though is being separated from their pack and so we got the loudest person out and made them sit with us in the corridor until the rooms quieted down. Worked wonders. That one person nearly died of boredom and nobody else wanted to suffer the same fate, so it stayed quiet even after the delinquent was allowed back with their friends.