The Star Hostel has dreams of being a chain of hotels but at the moment they are somebody's house and it feels like that. The computer is in the living room and you sleep in bedrooms and talk to people who have much more time to spend traveling than you do. This is a feature of reasonable lodging. Only in five star places do you meet the jet-setters who are on their way to Beirut tonight for a conference after spending the afternoon in Moscow going to three UNESCO World Heritage Sites, a Robert Wilson opera, and a molecular restaurant. Hostel customers pride themselves on the languor of their schedule almost as much as on the number of email addresses of girls from their home town they have collected; all the while avoiding cathedrals, museums, or pretty much any other thing that they couldn't do in San Diego. And they always win. If you mention to some young guy in a hostel that you've been traveling for eight months, he will be like "rad, dude. i've been out for four generations. i met this lady from solano beach..."