Clean, friendly and efficient, the hostel has private rooms with baths starting at 62 euros for a double; dormitory-style bunks start at 17 euros.
Stations doubled as dormitories for tens of thousands.
Jaron Friedman, a senior at Boston University, has done his time in the traditional dormitory double: a 180-square-foot box with a stranger in the next bed -- his video-game-addicted sophomore roommate was "probably one of the worst roommates anyone on this campus has ever had" -- and a bathroom down the hall shared by 24 underclassmen.
Architects Huy Than and Le Ha An have fashioned the cul-de-sac building into an inviting place to stay with twin, double, family and dormitory rooms, using French blue interiors, pretty stencilling, bamboo towel ladders and old French colonial tiles.
Some had been painting; others were in a school room that doubles as a dormitory.
Students have taken en masse to selling on Taobao: many university dormitories double as storerooms for goods awaiting orders.
Mr. Asif's work force consists of 22 men, who sit cross-legged beside mounds of soft, black leather, an informal assembly line, except that the factory floor is a cramped room doubling as a dormitory: the workers sleep above, in a loft.
Down a hall, small panelled offices had been converted to dormitories; four double bunk beds filled each one, their mattresses wrapped in plastic.
"We didn't expect the donations we got from people here, I was really overwhelmed," she said, in a house that doubled as a temporary dormitory for mothers with young children before Slovenian authorities arranged for trains to continue straight over the border.
Doubles from €47 B&B, dormitory beds from €15, tattvadesignhostel.com Why go?
