When you stay at a hostel with limited washing machines and dryers, doing laundry requires you to keep an eye on these facilities like a hawk.
Like someone’s trying to snatch your last two bottles of water on Earth.
As it was my final day in Toronto, I had to get laundry out of the way so I’d have clean clothes to wear for the next several days.
There were two washers and two dryers at the Canadiana, and I had no trouble at all popping my load into the washing machine.
I lost track of time so I got back to the laundry room past the 30-or-so minute wash cycle. When I finally got there, it turned out that some guy had taken my clothes out to put his in. So I took my damp clothes back to my room because the dryers were both in use and came back every 40 minutes two times.
Unfortunately, the dryers were always in use.
Every. Single. Time. I. Came. Back.
I started this laundry adventure at around 7 to 7:30 p.m. So I figured I’d just come back at 11 p.m. (I took my clothes with me back to the room at probably around 9 p.m. or so). Surely at least one machine would be vacant right before midnight!
But I was wrong. 11 p.m rolled along and there were still clothes drying!
So I took a chair and just sat there, along with another guy who had also been waiting for a long time. (He had an accent that sounded German to me, so I assume that’s what he was, although I didn’t ask.)
First come first serve didn’t apply in this situation.
As soon as the dryers stopped turning, we jumped out of our chairs, took the dry clothes out, and shoved ours in. We literally had to do this, and it proved necessary because about a minute or two after I popped my load in, some guys came to check the machines.
It was a competition for whoever could get the dryer first.
I got back to my room past midnight.
The day was certainly long because of that horrid laundry experience. But prior to that, the day went well.
Cindy gave me a token for the subway/bus because she only needed one. She checked out that morning, so we said our goodbyes and became Facebook friends.
Then I did more walking around.
On my way back to the hostel, I ended up talking to Marco, an Italian architecture student studying at the University of Toronto. I was a bit skeptical and thought he was going to try to sell me something or sign a petition.
Or maybe he had adapted the friendly Canadian trait.
We talked over some tea and he explained how every little detail of an establishment has been thought out.
Marco had been living in Toronto for four years. He wore half square framed glasses and his accent reminded me much of Matteo and Chiara’s. I’d heard various German accents at this point, but his pronunciation and tonation were nearly identical to that of the Italian couple I met in Victoria.
Initially, his goal was to own a firm. However, after working at a company for three years, he realized that being a boss involved more meetings and less involvement in the actual planning of project details.
As an architect, he lent insight into how he notices aspects of buildings that people may not actively think about.
For example, if a counter at a coffee shop contains uneven boards, that’s not a coincidence: it was planned. And if a counter is made out of wood instead of stone, it’s probably cheaper.
While I was unsure about carrying out a conversation with a random stranger on the street at first, we actually had a stimulating discussion about his profession and how it influences his perspective of the world.
He also said he was in Los Angeles for the grand opening of Terroni, an Italian restaurant he helped design on Spring and 8th.
We eventually parted ways so I could get around to doing laundry.