My girlfriend and I are backpacking and currently staying at a hostel in Germany. We’ve been in the same mixed dorm for four nights. On the second night, a group of four male backpackers checked in and since then the atmosphere in the room has felt increasingly weird.
What’s been bothering us is that these guys are constantly naked in the dorm, not just quick changes, but walking around, standing by their bunks, chatting with each other, and organizing their bags completely nude, often while women are in the room. This has happened repeatedly over multiple days.
We’ve stayed in many mixed dorms across different countries, so we expect that people will quickly change clothes in the open sometimes. But this feels very different.
My girlfriend is especially uncomfortable, and I don’t feel great about it either. At the same time, we don’t want to be unfair or culturally insensitive if this is considered acceptable in some backpacker circles, so we’re unsure how to handle it.
We’re considering asking the hostel to move us to a different room or changing hostels altogether, but part of me wonders whether we’re overreacting.
Is this actually normal or acceptable behavior in mixed dorms? Or are we overreacting?