Peculiarly perhaps, I have always enjoyed myself while traveling and having to stay in generic hotel rooms. The anonymity - or whatever - has always given a me bizarre frisson, as if I were the stranger come to town in a western. It played into the lone wolf quality that I confess is a part of my personality (and which readers of this blog have probably noticed). I just like to go the other way and am suspicious of any way everybody else is going. As often as not that urge has proved sound. And is there any greater thrill than walking the streets of a strange city late at night?
You said: "And is there any greater thrill than walking the streets of a strange city late at night?" And I say: When I was young (19) and knew no better, I wandered around lower Manhattan (i.e., Bowery) in the middle of the night, after having had a very stout, long, and intoxicating barroom experience; all went well, in spite of my unsteady gait, until I found an unconscious man--presumably dead or dying and bleeding heavily on the sidewalk--whom I quickly maneuvered around, and (then a bit more sober perhaps) I moved as quickly as possible to my wretched room in a wretched hotel in the middle of a wretched summer night in the Big Apple and proceeded to feel wretched for weeks afterward. Yes, it was a thrill, but not in the sense of the word that you intended.
ReplyDeletei admit to enjoying anonymous hotels for some reason. i think it's that the room makes no demands upon the imagination - it's purely functional, it doesn't try to engage you. i'm oddly divided between liking really basic, spartan accommodations, and old crumbly houses full of books & smelly dogs & rugs & heirlooms & mouldy paintings.
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