New Orleans was the first town where our couch surfing plans fell through, and we pulled into the India House international hostel instead. Even though we’d set out to only stay places for free, it turned out to be a good, safe decision that allowed us to have the freedom to do whatever we wanted without worrying about a host.

The India House hostel was adorable and I kind of wanted to stay forever. It is a converted old French house covered in bohemian art and eclectic knickknacks. Fellow backpackers were lounging around everywhere, most traveling from outside the United States. Except for pockets of the room where the air blew cool from a window unit, the house was hot and sticky with the New Orleans summer air. I chose a bed right in front of the air conditioner in the upstairs girls dormitory. For most of my stay there was only one other person in the dorm with me, and her bed was decorated and covered in possessions. I later figured out that she lives and works at the hostel, as all the employees do. The hostel was a great respite from the crazy town of New Orleans, and we often stumbled back there for some rest, even during the day, to get out of the heat.

I would say that New Orleans is a town that still hasn’t recovered from Hurricane Katrina, but a more accurate description would be that it is a town that hasn’t recovered in general. It was a strange mix of beautiful architecture, culture, art and a layer of disorder and decay from multiple natural disasters and a severe crime rate. Mixed into the classic French houses are hundreds of abandoned and crumbling buildings, and it is hard to tell if it is from Katrina or just general decay. Everybody we met told us not to go anywhere at night except the busy parts of the French Quarter because it was so unsafe. A cab driver even told me that on his second day of the job he was held at gunpoint and robbed.

The city had two very different sides to it. Bourbon Street is like a miniature Las Vegas strip. The bars never close, there are strip clubs and all sorts of debauchery. Marti Gras beads still hang from all the buildings, some are even grown into the trees or melted into the buildings. Our first night out we hit the main touristy drag of Bourbon Street. I had this unrealistic vision of what to expect. I thought the air was just going to be dripping with jazz and NOLA blues, but as we walked down the street we heard mostly club music and cover bands. I did get lost a bit in the Maison Bourbon club where we found a good “traditional” jazz band. The trombone player was about my age and played beyond his years. It made me so jealous and miss the amazing high you get from blasting some good grooves on your horn. This trip has made me realize how much I still need music in my life.

Standing in stark contrast to wailing trombone music was the ruined Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans still in shambles from Katrina. Some places were thriving and rebuilt and others were still in rubble. We saw stoops that led to nowhere, houses with walls caved in or roofs fallen off. Row after row of houses were marked with the FEMA marking system “X” outside the front door. There were busses of young volunteers still loading debris into trucks. Some men were sitting outside theses abandoned houses smoking and watching us as we drove through.

It seems to me a flawed concept to rebuild a city to be flooded and destroyed over and over. But there is a New Orleans pride that I don’t understand. We ate at a local restaurant called Liuzza’s, where I had my first muffaletta sandwich, and we noticed a picture on the wall of the restaurant flooded above the door. When we asked the waitress how the restaurant could possibly physically recover from that, she said it was stripped bare and built again.

When she spoke of the restaurant she called it her “life,” recounting the whole history of it and the family that owns it. There seems to be a notion of “survival at any cost.” Like the city is determined to never go under and never surrender, even to mother nature. It seems to me to be an impossible thing to sustain, and especially when so much of the city is still in ruins and struck with poverty. But I could see and feel that New Orleans “spirit” in the faces of the locals, logical or not.

Our New Orleans experience was also spiced with an international culture as we met and swapped stories with travelers from all over the world. I didn’t think that America had much of a hostel culture, but at the India House we were surrounded by people just like us who were exploring a country  that was foreign and exciting. I’ve heard of many Americans backpacking through Europe after college, but I’d never really thought of European kids taking off to the wild West.

I wandered around and talked to everybody. I wanted to hear their stories. Many of them were taking trains and busses to get across the country. Some had automobiles like us, and were taking advantage of the “cheap” American gas. Some, like a French-Canadian trumpet player were traveling by hitchhiking - something I’d been taught to fear in the post-Kerouac era America. One girl I met was about my age and took off on a trip to America all by herself. It was encouraging because I’m always told how dangerous it is for a woman to travel by herself. And maybe it is dangerous, but more power to her just the same.

I eventually found myself crammed in the back of a taxi cab with them headed out to Frenchman Street to find some good music. Communicating in a blur of accents, we hit the French Quarter once again, and everybody seemed to be looking for the “real” New Orleans. We were looking for it in the music, we were looking for it in the beer, in the vibe of the people around us. A gang of internationals and one American girl hopped from place to place under the night sky laughing at each other and looking behind us to make sure the scary part of New Orleans wasn’t creeping up behind us.

All and all, it was a wild goose chase. We walked from one end of the French Quarter to the other peeking our heads into different clubs and hole-in the wall places, waiting for the magical New Orleans to find us. But we couldn’t find the “real” New Orleans. Perhaps we were guided from one tourist trap to another. Maybe we didn’t know what we were looking for, or maybe it doesn’t really exist. Maybe the romantic idea of the New Orleans culture has been washed away or absorbed up into the modern dance clubs. Or maybe we heard it and walked right by. Somewhere off in the distance maybe there was a trumpet blowing the answer we were all seeking, blowing the sound of the city that won’t give in until the water pulls it under.