Low life | 23 July 2011

I asserted that my room was booked and paid for by the travel company organising my trip. Maarika, the lovely Estonian trainee receptionist, said the room was booked, yes, but not paid for. I insisted, she resisted, I gave way. I handed over my credit card and signed here, here and here. She handed over the card key to room 286 and said she hoped I would sleep well.

Only when I was standing in the tiny, not particularly clean room overlooking a noisy road junction did I realise that Maarika’s hope might have been sincere. It was 11 o’clock on Saturday night. Police and ambulance sirens blared more or less continuously. From every fourth car issued the boom, boom, boom of a boom box. The double glazing was old, cheap, badly fitted and useless. I was sober. Sleep would be difficult, if not impossible. I manoeuvred my wheeled suitcase back out of the door and returned with it down to the lobby.

Miss Estonia had just left the building, said her colleague. He, however, listened with utmost gravity to my complaints about the noise. He’d have a word with the manager, he said, about having me moved somewhere quieter. He disappeared through the door behind him and re-emerged a minute later looking elated. The manager had given his assent. So, sir, he said, on behalf of the management would I now please accept, with his apologies, my new key card for room 186.

So back upstairs with my suitcase I went, congratulating myself on my assertiveness. My plan now was to go straight to sleep in the quietness I’d earned for myself by my positive action. Room 186, however, when I found it, was the room directly below room 286, and therefore closer to the street and if anything even noisier.