Hotel Rooms

Hotels. Big ones. Small ones. First category. Others not so good. Hotel rooms. Two beds, one night table, one closet, a mirror.

I have been to lots of them. I have stayed in good hotels, in not so good hotels and in second category hotels. All of them leave the same impression: Excessively orderly.

On the one hand, I like staying in hotel rooms, because – in my mind – I associate them with the word vacation.

I like the smell of cleanliness inside; I like the fact that there is always someone to take care of the room and I don’t have to do any of the things I normally do at home.

And from the balcony I do face a different view than the one I normally face.

There is something different in the air. I must arrange my stuff in a different way, in new positions, under a different roof.  I think I like hotel rooms, because I always compare them to home and they seem like an escape from daily routine.

 
On the other hand, I can’t stand staying in a hotel for more than three or four days. When I am at home, I do want everything orderly and clean. But when I am on vacation, I hate living in a sterilized room that doesn’t have a bit of sand on the floor!

You see, every day I go to the sea, I bring sand in the room, I rumple my bedcovers, I sleep, I wake up and I go out.  And then…when I return…a miracle has taken place!

The room is so orderly and clean that I sometimes think I’ve entered into another person’s room, a bit like trespassing into someone else’s life.

I feel that if a stranger comes in, he probably won’t realize a real person actually lives there. The sand has disappeared from the floor as if by magic, the bathroom is spotless, with not a single drop of water anywhere, the towels are folded and hung on a row of hooks, and the shower curtain around the tub has been carefully pulled together. Last, but not least, the bed . . . Oh my God . . . how can a bed be so, so tightly made up?

I have tried a thousand times to make my bed like that and I have never managed it!

How could the cleaning ladies stretch the sheets so much?

So much so, that when I go to sleep I try to lie perfectly still so as not to muss them.  I end up not being able to close my eyes because I’m so nervous about moving. So, I get up and mess everything up . . . sheets and blankets, I mix them all up. Then, I fall asleep in order to get up again the following morning and live the day . . . “The Groundhog’s Day”!

I like hotel rooms, but only for a little bit. . . . only for as long as it is necessary to escape.

Because after a few days they just drive me crazy.

The overly exaggerated neatness, that indescribable painting on the wall, the cheap mirror, the fact that I don’t own the keys of the place where I sleep . . . the thought that I sleep on a bed where hundreds, even thousands of strange people have already slept in!

It is said that in order to appreciate something, you either have to miss it or compare it to something worse.

Well, the hotel room is the example that confirms that rule.

When I am home, I wish to be somewhere else, but if I stay away too long, I miss being home . . . and  compared to it, anything else seems worse to me.

There’s no place like home, they say…