Ageing in between hotels

No birds chirping in the morning

I snoozed the alarm again. It's 8:30. The first time it rang it was 7:30. I'm going to wake up at 9:00. That's a fact and I'm not going to negotiate on it, just because the other phone is ringing. Some sleepless idiot for sure.

The fact is that I never sleep well in hotels. Damn, I don't sleep well anywhere anymore but at least at home, I get that impression. This hotel is no exception either. The fucking air conditioning kept me half awake last night because it makes some noises that would keep up a bear in its hibernation period. It's that type of A/C unit. Whole damn thing is inside the room, just underneath the window, roaring its insides out, smelling like it's 1998 all over again. I'm still expecting to see the lame Democratic Convention, the ones in power back then, to appear on the news.

I and my colleagues always decide to check in together at the breakfast at 8:30, when we part during the evenings. No shame in us when we shake hands, serious and a little smoked from the wine, promising ourselves the same lies, all over again. Pathetic.

I always come down at 9:15 or something like that and while I'm doing that I'm not the one late. Our boss always is. So I suck on that tit all the way as sleep for me is a very precious resource that I don't get enough.

I guess nine out of ten times I have breakfast is in a hotel. At home, there's a maximum of 2 days/week that I might have it. Saturday and Sunday. Now it's no different. Without mistake, I am eating what I'm usually eating when I'm here: their weak level omelette and that bad, bad orange juice they have. As in 90% of the time in this hotel, the vegetables are cut from last night and are already starting to rot. As a result, I'm using as a side thing olives instead. They have the green and the black. Equally bad quality. Haven't they heard of kalamata? It's the cheap and decent thing to do when you select olives. But... what can you expect from a hotel owned by a former communist, 80 years old now (the owner, not the hotel), who spent half of his life licking other communists butts and the other half, stealing from the Romanian Football Federation?

And as well as many other buildings in Romania, this one was also raised on the skeleton that should've been a communist block of flats but it didn't get to that. In 1990 there were o lot of these skeletons that got interrupted by the Revolution so the slick guys, the communist ass kissing fellows, got to take these for virtually nothing. 4 stories, small apartments with even smaller bathroom, were transformed into small hotel rooms with tiny pissing space. LUXURY! And the pretentions they have, Jesus Christ, not even in Melia Grand Hermitage you can't find egos as big as these.

Repainting the damaged

"Can I take your luggage upstairs sir?"

No, you fucktard, this is only my laptop bag in which I've shoved one piece of underwear. The thing is I'm staying only until tomorrow, it's the 20th time I'm coming here and I'm always not paying the checks. You know you'll not see that tip from me so why bother? You are the same luggage boy since last time, and the time before and I can swear you came here on the Russian tanks together with your owner, so you fucking know me by now. You should rather fix that spinning door cause I entered on the fire escape.

Oh, and great job in redecorating your reception. Now it's only uglier, look more like a second-hand hotel and hey! look! you also changed the receptionist. This fatso is a way better user experience than your previous, sexy lady. Always thought that if I'd go one night and ask her for hookers she'd say: "Why bother the cab driver? I'm here!". With this fat prick, this one's surely resolved.

I like the bookcase touch! It takes your mind from the dubious characters roaming in the lobby sometimes. After all, this is a place soccer players sometimes come, so the lack of a thick-necked guy, with the usual Porsche Cayenne outside would be a lack of services. That "good-for-all-demands" guy that can either get your daily fix or fix you daily.

Being afraid of elevators is something that hit me around the age of five and the only places I lack this fear, while I step into that death capsule, are hotels. The elevators in the hotels are like girls in a club: a lot of makeup while the lights are dim. Lots of distractions so that you don't see the fact that the revision is either skipped, either seems shabby and so that you miss the fact that the elevator itself bangs on the walls of the shaft. I wonder if the brakes are still there. Maybe they've removed them on the accounts of "4 floors is not such a high altitude to fall from".

While being on the toilet in the morning and enjoying one of the books you put inside the room (as part of the redecorations process I assume) I realised I have to thank you. I would've been lost without this small corner with books you've made. I mean, what can someone do in a hotel room if not start a Paulo Coelho book? Good one guys!

This is a treat while being on "the throne" and thinking about the moves you've got to undertake when you'll have to get out of the bathroom because the door gets so close to the seat in the process of opening it, that you have to get into yoga positions to run out. If you're a chubby guy you may get yourself stuck pretty easy. If not in the bathroom, for sure in the shower cabin.

Damaged goods

Call me a pig but I like to make a mess in the hotel rooms I'm staying in. It's like compensating for things I don't get to do at home. Live the dangerous life, be a rogue... And I like the feeling of having everything taken care of. It's in the price.

Have you noticed how the room maids tuck the sheets under the mattress so tight that you have to do incredible efforts in order to take it out? It's like they pin in with some nails on the other side of the mattress. I take that personally. So fucking up the bed is among the first things I do when I get into the room after they've tidied it up. When I have the time, I stalk them and immediately after they've come out of my room, I go in and wreck the bed. I find it there, with that sober look on its sheets. Staying perfectly flat, like a soldier presenting its arms. At the end of the process, it looks like a bed where a band of hippies had sex and overdosed on it.

I also smoke in the rooms. It's my dirty, little secret and it makes me a villain. The bad guy. The asshole. I smoke on the window, with it open, so I may get away with a pardon for this crime. I nicely use a small glass plate, which I clean at the end of the day before they come to enchain the bed again. I don't want to give them the upper hand when they face me and have a clear saying to the concierge downstairs. And god forbid to get inside the mouth of this concierge.

There was a time when they allowed smoking in the lobby. Not long ago...2-3 years back. And suddenly, they changed this, from one of my stays to the other. I never bothered to check the small sticker on the door as I was getting in, but like I always did, I lit up a Marlboro immediately as I came in. I can't even describe the face the guy made. It was like I pushed the red button, like I suddenly killed an entire country, made up only by kids and women. He almost hired me, only to fire me. I felt like I was still in school and the math teacher was again rubbing my face in some homework I didn't do. Of course that I extinguished the damn thing immediately but the guy held a grunch on me until he left the hotel. I guess that he did the same with the owner or something because he disappeared just like that.

The end of a cycle

I don't sleep while in hotels. I lie on the bed, in a state of vigilance. Though I like the end of a day in hotels. I like the loneliness sometimes and being alone in a hotel room, though totally wrong, I realise, to me, it gives a sense of purity. I associate that with the crowdedness of the cities I'm in, I try to imagine who are the guys driving the lonely cars I see on the road while I sip my last cigarette of the day, and what they do for a living (except the cab driver...I know what they do for a living).

These are the moments I enjoy making plans, working on my laptop on the small desks they provide usually. I get along just fine with the height of hotels desks so I sometimes write things down at 2-3 o'clock in the morning. I sometimes photograph, like I did in this post.