I was homeless in Brussels once. Someone stole my backpack with my passport in it, and just like that I was stateless. It was over a weekend, and the embassy to my home country was closed and wouldn't open until Monday.
No food, no money, no water, I had nothing to do. I walked all over that city, really got to see every interesting corner of it. It's like 5 different countries smushed into one, and you can see french/german/british influence almost everywhere. There's an overpass that cuts right through it at one point, occupying nothing underneath and that's where the migrants gather on Saturday mornings to host their wares in this long unyielding impromptu market.
I slept in their parks, talked with their police (who didn't believe my story), and even struck up a conversation with a random Canadian I met at the train station, who fitted the stereotype to a T, and gave me money so I could get by another day, asking for nothing in return.
When Monday rolled around, I took a nice leisurely stroll to the embassy and got an emergency visa, ready for the long bus trip home, and genuinely sadly bid farewell to that beautiful crazy mess of a city. It shares a special place in my heart, bureaucracy be damned.
In a server room, multiple times, not amazing but the blinking lights are kinda fun to look at at it's basically like a very loud white noise machine. Also it's nice and cool.
On a bench in under construction zone of a subway station. I had to explain security guards hard enough that I was neither homeless nor a terrorist (the security there were pretty much anti-homeless).
In a little hut that the chair lift operator of the ski area (closed in the summer, when I was there) would use normally.
Top shelf of a walk in closet that was obscured from view from the door.
Under a futon couch.
On the roof of the house in the angled portion where 2 downward slopes come together.
In the back of a truck in the back yard.
In the middle of a grassy area behind our garage
My parents used to wake me up at 4:30 in the morning to take a cold shower and then spend the next 4 hours doing religious worship. The only time I could read "Horrible secular books" like Mutiny on the Bounty, the three musketeers, and the man in the iron mask was late at night after everyone went to bed. I would stay up till 2:30-3:00am sometimes reading and I knew waking up at 4:30 was just not gonna happen.
Yeah, I got in a bunch of trouble when I came out of my hiding spot the next morning, but sometimes it was worth it.
Pile of cardboard at work because I was pulling 90 hour weeks and I had to work in like 5 hours at the end of my previous shift and I figured the extra time spent traveling home was better spent sleeping.
On a train. It was at night and it was a long train ride, and it's the only occasion where I remember falling asleep while sitting up!
A window sill in a Vegas hotel. Was the broke friend on a guys trip and the floor was taken
Various convention floors. Mother would take me to her various fiber arts things, I'd get tired, I'd sleep under a table with my coat on me, or wrapped around my arms.
I'd explode if I slept on the floor these days.
On a golf course putting green.
I was drunk as a skunk.
I climbed the fence and then I took the big ball markers that mark the tee of each hole, and I stabbed the stabby part into a tree until one tree had all the markers stabbed into it.
Then I went to sleep.
Not super proud of that
When I was homeless I slept the kind of places homeless people sleep: Libraries, park benches, unused buildings, moving busses, the subway.
When I was in the Scouts I slept the kind of places adventurous campers sleep: an igloo I helped build, on top of and under picnic tables, brush lean-tos, under the stars on a mountaintop. The weirdest was probably one time the weather turned dangerous during a jamboree and we all decamped to the nearest YMCA and I slept on the hallway floor with a towel over my face because we couldn't turn the lights off.
There was also the time I got locked out and couldn't wake my wife up by phone or banging or yelling. It was one in the morning the coldest night of the year so I hopped the last train downtown and crashed in the break room at work on a massage chair.
Bathtub full of vinegar and water after I got a bad sunburn.
Did that help?
On top of a torpedo in a submarine with loud af Navy Seals a few feet away.
How many hours had you been awake?
Oh, like, 12 hours. Maybe 13 or 14. Submariners live on an 18 hour day, not 24.
I once feel asleep, standing up, at a Static X concert. 12 straight hours of drinking will have that effect...
December 23, 1995: On a wooden basement staircase, in an empty house, with no heat, with my dog. My parents lost the house. All our stuff had been moved out. Our nervous dog wouldn't settle. I couldn't leave him. That was the last night I slept in the house where I grew up.
December 1998: On a basement floor near Ottawa. At least it was carpeted. Hammered after some party near a college. In the night, some angel draped a blanket over me. Best feeling of my life to that point. Some guy's sister was kind to us.
May 2009: Coober Pedy, Australia. Slept in a hostel that was in a mine. Slept underground in a room with bunk beds and no windows. It was weird. Felt like a bomb shelter.
December 2011: Wadi Rum, Jordan. Slept outside under the stars on a sleeping mat on a rock of biblical proportion. The guy in the tent next to ours was snoring. Loudly. My partner couldn't take it. We dragged our mattresses out onto a rock 300 m from camp. I reasoned — scorpions were less likely to find us. Coulda been wrong. Still here to tell the tale.
I've slept in some weird places.
Curled up in a ball in the back of my Wrangler.
After working a 20hr shift, I got home reached in the back to get my backpack and couldn't quite reach. Crawled out of the seat to grab it and woke up 6 hours later disoriented af.
I used to do sail washing and we would store the sails in this giant wooden rack. All the spinnakers went in a big pile on the top. Me and my buds would take turns having naps up there while we waited for the sails to dry. That was the best winter job.
Long standby shift at a hotel (think Hilton style). My employer (not the hotel) had a storage room that was just an old hotel room with all the fittings taken out- No bed or couch, just storage racks. I got super bored, took a nap in the old bathtub.
The staff bathroom of an abandoned diner on top of a mountain in Japan. I was cycle touring, didn't want to put up the tent if I could just go inside. The big windows and proximity to the road meant I didn't want to be using a flashlight inside, so I went into the staff bathroom, no windows. Also no toilets or anything, just a bare tiled room. Weird place to sleep, but I went into the main area to make breakfast, it was an amazing view. Bonus for not getting the tent wet.
I wanted a nap in undergrad but didn't have a lot of time between classes so, to avoid being disturbed, I climbed up onto a lecture hall roof to sleep. It was a really nice nap
Edit: also once when I worked at taco bell I napped on the boxes of sauce packets in the back
Just the other day I took a nap in a (dry at the time) runoff ditch behind a commercial plaza, bc if I drove home to nap I would've had less time to sleep
This guy naps
On the floor of a Turkish community center. Alternatively, over the North Pole.
In a Walmart parking lot. in a van, with three homies... in a random state. Was it Georgia?
In the classroom, on the floor, before class started, and was woken up when class was over.
What a nice teacher. :)
A public toilet ..it was cold outside
On a picnic table in a state park. I was sober, just very tired.
Probably the floor of an airport. Everything was closed and the chairs weren't an option, so I just picked a spot on the floor and used my bag as a pillow for about six hours before I got woken up by the morning cleaning people.
Long story on how I got there but I slept part of a night in the engine car of an old steam train in a city park.
In the women's locker room at the shipyard. Nobody ever goes in there, it's clean, it's never used, and I just got off a sixteen hour shift of welding. I was damn tired and couldn't muster the strength to drive myself home.
I got about five hours of sleep which was enough rest to drive myself home and call out "sick" the next day.
In a supposedly haunted revolutionary war cemetery.
in a forest on a pile of sharp edged boulders
Under a bridge in a park during a brief homeless stint.
And.
Some randos place in NYC when traveling on a whim with an ex. Met some dudes at a bar in Soho. 3 guys lived in basically a closet. One owned a vegetarian restaurant (it was actually nice). One was a gold trader (I drove him around the city one day. Lol). And the other....turned out to be the NYC subway flasher (the one at that time)
The cold tile floor of the marching band's laundry room for about two hours. I had a severe migraine, and for me, that means I'm going to take a nap no matter where I am. It was about as comfortable as you can imagine.
I'm jealous that you can sleep with a migraine. I can't
Sleep is one of the few things that put a dent in mine. When I started seeing Auras on people it was a sign to go to sleep in the next hour or so or face the weight of the cosmos right behind my left eye.
dog cage (it was voluntary, don't worry, I was a strange kid)
An art project/bench outside of my high school the last day of senior year while waiting for friends to finish finals. I forget the term, but the bench was covered in small glass/ceramic pieces to form a pattern on it. Super uncomfortable, would not recommend
Mosaic?
Yes! That is the word I was blanking on!
I've slept on airplanes, which tend to fly over just about anywhere along their path, so technically over the top of lots of places, and if at least one of them wasn't weird I'd be surprised
Inside a Trojan goat. No, I will not elaborate further.
At least did you and your party conquer the city?
Probably in the bathroom.
Train station alley in Prague, Czechoslovakia.
Sleepers, sleepers, man your bunks. Give the ship a clean sleep down fore and aft. Sleep in all decks, ladder wells, and passageways. Now sleepers.
