#oneaday, Day 41: Hotel Dusk, Dawn and Day

I love hotels. I’m not sure what it is about them, but if I have the opportunity to stay in a hotel, I always enjoy it. Perhaps it’s just the novelty value of “living” and sleeping somewhere different for a little while. Perhaps it’s the whole “being waited on” thing. Perhaps it’s the incessant politeness of the staff, even if you’re staying at a relatively low-key establishment. (Well, usually.)

I imagine that staying in a hotel semi-permanently in a sort of Alan Partridge manner would quickly get tiresome, but I do know that I certainly never tire of short breaks where I get to have a little place all to myself in relative privacy.

I think part of the appeal is wondering what goes on behind closed doors. The somewhat juvenile side of most people would probably be listening out for people having sex and giggling like an idiot, but it’s not just about catching people doing the dirty.  Who are the people behind those doors? Why are they here? What possible reason brought them to the same place that you happened to be at the same time? Is there some dark purpose at work? Should you go and talk to them? (Probably not. And if you do, steer clear of the term “dark purpose” as it tends to freak people out.)

Another part of the appeal is the simple opportunity to sleep somewhere else. Your own bed sometimes gets boring. And while most beds follow the same sort of structure (flat bit to lie on, possibly with something to stop your head falling off at one end should you inadvertently decapitate yourself in the night) it’s remarkable how different some beds can feel from one another.

Take the bed in the hotel I’m currently in, for example. It’s pretty comfortable, and a lot “springier” than I’m used to. I got to sleep last night at a reasonable time and woke up early feeling pretty refreshed. Compare and contrast with my bed at home, in which I suffer from terrible insomnia and typically wake up some time around noon, possibly having woken up once around 7am, been unable to move except to text or tweet and then promptly passed out again. Is it just the bed that does this? Or is it other environmental factors? Probably a combination of all of them.

I look around a hotel room and it often makes me wonder about other guests. Are there other people staying in this hotel long enough to make actually using all the drawers and wardrobe space worthwhile? This specific one has bookshelves; does anyone turn up to a hotel with enough books to necessitate the use of bookshelves, particularly in this age of the Kindlenookreadotron? And why are hotels one of the few places left in the world that still have CRT TVs?

My delight at hotels even extends to virtual depictions of them. I vividly recall by far my favourite level of Duke Nukem 3D being the hotel level. And I enjoyed Hotel Dusk on DS a great deal, for obvious reasons. No One Lives Forever had an excellent hotel level that involved some very precarious rooftop sneaking, and although I still haven’t got around to beating Gabriel Knight 3, its initial setting of a hotel was appealing, even in all its low-poly anti-glory.

So hotels are great. A home away from home, surrounded by strangers. A place where you can be whoever you want to be for a few days, and no-one will know any different from the day you check in to the time you check out.

Just remember to hang the thing on the door if you’re planning on getting naked and the maids are doing their rounds, huh?