A Typical Day in Our Hotel.

Have you ever lived in a hotel?  We’re seven months into our stay in one and it’s testing my sanity a little bit.  This is how a typical weekday goes.

5:30am: Mr. Stomp Stomp, our upstairs neighbor, wakes up and begins stomping back and forth in his bedroom, directly above my side of the bed.  I wonder what he is doing.

5:45am: Mr. Meena’s alarm goes off and he slowly wakes up (he is not a morning person at all).  I remain semi-awake from the stomping.

6:30am… ish: Mr. Meena heads to the bathroom to shower, which means it’s time for our bird to start his morning chirpfest.  His tweets have one volume (loud) and one setting (constant) during a morning shower.

 

 

7:00am: Mr. Meena leaves for work.

7:30am: Semi-permanent hotel guests start leaving for work and slamming their doors.  Overnight guests head first to breakfast, with a SLAM of the door, and then shortly after leave to check out with a SLAM and the sound of luggage being rolled across the floor.

8:00am: Somebody, somewhere, starts operating a drill.  The first month we lived here it was across the street, then on the side street adjacent to our hotel for the next month, then a month long overhaul of the parking lot on the backside of the hotel, and most recently on the sidewalk in front of our bedroom.  Germany is constantly undergoing construction.

 

I finally accept the fact that I can’t fall back asleep and shuffle over to our door to turn the key an extra half-turn so that no one can open it from the outside.  This prevents the hotel staff from being able to burst into our rooms for any and every reason whenever they want to.

Then I open the Rolladen (exterior blinds on German homes) so that I won’t spend the day in eternal darkness that prevents me from having any clue what time it is.

 

 

Next it’s time to go to the bathroom and let the bird out (he sleeps in there because we can keep it warm).  I then attempt to get dressed while the bird uses my hair and clothing as his personal jungle gym.  Good times.

9:00am… ish: The elevator doors go *ding* in the lobby and I hear the cleaning staff roll their carts outside my door (literally outside my door, they have a tendency to block me in).  They start cleaning, which means lots of cursing and a monstrous amount of noise – it sounds like a wild animal has been let loose inside the hotel.  I think they break at least one dish a day with their furious cleaning.  And that is why I have banned all of the cleaning staff except one older lady from cleaning our rooms; because they are way too rough with our things and they stress me out.

9:30am: If we’ve gotten any mail or packages then Hotel Mom comes and tries to open our door so she can place it inside.  Of course I have locked the door so that she can’t open it, because I am having none of that.  She noisily tries to unlock the door three or four times within ten seconds and then stalks off, not realizing that I can’t actually get to the door that quickly.

10 – 11am: The hotel staff is done cleaning and Hotel Mom comes through to do her post-cleaning inspection of the five or six rooms on our floor.  SLAM. SLAM. SLAM. SLAM. SLAM.

11:30am: I smell cigarette smoke and remember that it’s time for some Germans to take their pre-lunch smoke break.  I close our window that is directly above the smoking patio.

 

 

12:30pm: I utilize my newfound skills in being able to prepare lunch in a teeny tiny kitchen and proceed to use almost every dish we own and make the whole place hot after heating up the stove or the oven because we don’t have a vent.

1:30pm: At this point I’ve made awkward eye contact at least once with the people in the apartment directly across the street from mine.  Our bedroom window lines up perfectly with their living room window, where either they, their cat, or their dog can be seen hanging out and watching people at all times of the day.

2:30pm: New guests begin arriving and I watch them as they try to navigate the hilariously tiny parking lot.

 

 

3:30pm: I’m dutifully working on something for my blog when the hotel internet system blocks me from visiting a perfectly acceptable website.  Sigh.

3:45pm: The second round of mail deliveries happens, which means we may or may not have another furious attempt by Hotel Mom to open our door.

4:30-5:30pm: Mr. Meena heads home from work and hopes that I’ve remembered to unlock the door so he can open it.

6:30: It’s dark enough that everyone can see into our rooms and I finally remember to close our Rolladen, once again making awkward eye contact with the people across the street.

7:00pm: At this time in the evening Hotel Dad can be found quietly meandering around the property as he waits patiently for Hotel Mom to finish up whatever it is she is doing.

 

 

7:30pm: If we venture into the lobby we can hear Germans singing or listening to their TVs at full volume.  Strange cooking smells start to waft through the door.  If it’s laundry night then we’ll typically encounter these three types of people:

1) The new people who actually believe that the washing machine cycle will only charge them five euros (in €1 coins only), because this is what it tells you at the beginning.  What they don’t know is that it gradually adds time (which means you have to put in more money) and if you don’t add another one euro coin it will lock and you won’t be able to get your clothes out until you pay.  We often end up paying the extra euro to get their clothes out so that we can put ours in.
2) The people that have apparently left the free state of Bavaria while their clothes were in the washer.  Mr. Meena patiently checks once, twice, three times, and then gingerly removes their clothes from the machine and places them on the table, where they typically remain throughout our entire washing cycle.
3) The people that never do laundry and now they have to do five loads consecutively and might as well put up a sign saying “Don’t bother coming back down to the basement to check because it’s just not happening for you tonight”.

8:00pm: Guests arrive late to the hotel and try to figure out how to use the lock box system that has their room key in it.  We listen to their struggles with sympathy.

If we’ve ventured out for the evening and are returning, we usually encounter people smoking outside or just standing there forlornly because they forgot their key when they took the trash out or ran to their car and now they’re locked out of the building.

8:45pm: We frantically try to finish doing anything that makes noise because quiet hours start at 9pm and Germans take them quite seriously.

9:30pm: We’re still probably making too much noise but at least we feel bad about it.

10:30pm: Mr. Stomp Stomp begins his nightly stomping routine.  I lie in bed looking at the ceiling and wonder how I ended up living in an extended stay hotel in the first place.  A handful of cars with loud music or loud mufflers barrel down Luitpoldstraße, just a few feet from our bedroom, and we remember to close the window.  I fall asleep dreaming of building a house with Mr. Meena back home on several acres where no one will try to unlock my door several times a day or tell me to turn my music down after 9pm.