If you are in Paris, please stay there! Forever! Spare me bed bugs!

“Paris is currently in a panic because of these creepy crawlies.” That was one of our headlines on Tuesday. If I had written the title, I would have used a different word as a synonym for bed bugs: “spawns of evil” or “Satan bugs”.

“Creepy crawlies” sounds kind of harsh. Ladybugs crawl. Babies crawl. But bed bugs?

Anyone who now thinks: “Don’t overdo it now” has not understood the seriousness of the situation. I don’t know what an absolute disaster a bed bug infestation is. And I’ve never had bed bugs myself. Like me.

It was 2017 in a hostel in southern Chile. I traveled alone and stayed in a 10 bed bunkhouse. I had booked three nights. After the first night I had the first stitches in my face. They were exceptionally itchy, but I assumed they were mosquito bites. After all, the hostel was located next to a large lake.

The next day the hostel reception ordered all guests in my room to hand in their backpacks. You have to spray everyone with chemicals. There is a suspicion of ‘pulgas’ – in German: fleas. That didn’t make me nervous. Until that moment, I didn’t even know there was such a thing as bed bugs. I had no idea what harm they meant. At the reception I was also assured: “With the chemicals, the animals disappear very quickly. Does not matter.”

It was a lie. A in bold Lie!

The next night I woke up with an incredible itch. My fingers, my arms, my neck, my stomach, my back, my legs, my feet – everything itched like crazy.

At first I wanted to ignore it. But it didn’t work. Sleeping was impossible. I writhed and scratched until I felt blood under my fingernails. Then I got up, went to the bathroom and noticed that there were numerous stitches all over my body, often lined up no more than one centimeter apart. Like a circle full of stitches around my ankle. A line across the entire calf to the back of the knee. And different lines on the arms, between the fingers and across the chest.

It took me at least twenty minutes to apply the ointment to all the stitches on my body. Then I went back to bed. But I couldn’t sleep anymore. I imagined I was about to be eaten alive. Again I stood up, again I found new stitch lines, again I applied cream.

But on the fourth attempt to fall asleep, I suddenly knew for sure:

I felt something move towards me from the foot of the bed. I grabbed my phone and shined the flashlight under the blanket. And there they were. At least ten of them. No fleas. Bed bug. On the way to their party.

I had to stifle a cry of disgust to avoid waking the entire room. But I probably wasn’t that quiet when within a few minutes I grabbed all my stuff and ran into the common room. On the hostel bench I looked for a new hostel, called a taxi and fled into the night, stabbed and in my pajamas.

The bed bugs came with me. They fit nicely in my travel backpack. Between jeans and llama wool sweaters. But I didn’t find out until two nights later, when I shined the flashlight under the blanket again. In the meantime, my large tube of Fenistil had run out, my arms and legs were covered in more than 200 – yes, I counted – stitches that were slowly becoming infected, and I was completely exhausted.

I barely slept, I barely ate, I was miserable – and I also struggled to find hostels that would house me. My stabbed face spoke volumes. I spent my days not on travel adventures, but on crabbing. And thereby figure out how to get rid of the devil’s animals.

Google said: Bed bugs are immune to most chemicals. You can only get rid of them if you wash your clothes in water of at least 60 degrees. But in Chile people usually only wash with cold water.

When, after days of searching, I finally found a laundromat that did laundry with hot water for hotels, I burst into tears of joy. Through requests and begging – and coercion – I persuaded the operator to wash my clothes, even though he didn’t actually accept orders from private individuals.

Back at the hostel, I boiled water, which I poured over my backpack, toiletries, and anything else I couldn’t put in the wash in the bathroom. Then I took a damp cloth and cleaned all the cracks in my electrical appliances.

Not a single bedbug, not a single egg was allowed to survive.

Otherwise I would have a whole bunch of bedbugs on my hands again in no time.

My efforts paid off. I managed to kill all the bed bugs. But the fear that a single specimen had survived persisted for a long time. Many nights I would wake up and shine the flashlight under the covers. The itching also lasted at least two weeks.

A few years have passed now. However, I still can’t stay in a hotel without carefully inspecting the mattress first. If there are small black dots along the seams, this is a sign of an infestation. It’s the feces of bed bugs.

My friends like to make fun of me when I turn over a mattress. But I do not care. I’d rather be paranoid than bring home bed bugs. Because you can hardly get these evil creatures out of your apartment anymore.

Unless you burn the whole hut down.

I guess that would be my plan if I ever found bed bugs in my home. Apologies, dear neighbors. But it’s for your own good. For the good of us all. Otherwise, the situation here will soon be like that in Paris.