At some
point early on in the drive, Hub looked for the details of our hotel in
Leipzig (yes, Leipzig, bear with me) to put into the SatNav. He couldn’t find them. Which soon led us to realise that it wasn’t
actually booked... Delightful! So when we stopped for lunch, he had the task
of finding somewhere for us to stay.
Leipzig hotels were now all too expensive for his liking, so he decided
to look further afield, hence Berlin.
This was perhaps a good move as it was a faster drive (and wow, the
autobahn did not disappoint! Some serious nutjobs on the road) and we would, in
theory, arrive there quicker. Job
done. But of course when you are
travelling with kids there are stops and more stops and things take a little
longer than one would like. So our ETA
was going to be close to midnight.
Again.
I said
to Hub (and pay attention, because this is important) perhaps we should call
the hotel to let them know we’re going to be late. It’s ok, he said, I specified 11pm to
midnight on the booking. Great, I said. Fine.
Not
fine.
After a
fairly disastrous foray to KFC where they didn’t accept Visa or Mastercard and
it took the poor boy 20 minutes of driving around to find a cash point, we eventually
arrived at the hotel. It looked pleasant
enough, and I went to check in and find where we could park the van. I was hindered from entering the building by
three German guys who were struggling to get their access card to work. After a few minutes a guy appeared in the
foyer to let them in, so I followed. I
assumed he was staff and so said I needed to check in. No, he said, there’s no-one here, and it was
then I realised he was in his t-shirt and underwear and clearly not a hotel
employee...
It
turned out that there were no employees in the entire hotel. They finished at 10 pm and it was now half
past midnight. The underwear guy showed
me the emergency number to call and speak to the manager. She told me we should have let them know we
were going to arrive late. But we did, I
said. We specified it on our
booking... I think if I hadn’t had
played the children card then we might have found ourselves without a room for
the night. But the girls have their
uses! I still have no idea if Underwear
Guy was a guest or a friend but he knew the manager and spoke to her
extensively in, I think, Polish. Despite
his state of undress, he was very helpful and found out the code for the lock
box with the emergency access card, and said we could park in the manager’s
space out front. He then took me up to
our room, in the smallest lift imaginable...not the most comfortable
situation. Once the room was located,
and I had solemnly promised to return the emergency card – no doubt for the
next poor sod that needed it – he left us to it and we could bring in the
luggage and the girls – not in that order.
I did
hear him again at about two in the morning, wandering through the corridors,
whistling. I briefly feared for our
lives in my half-asleep state, but we were all intact in the morning so I guess
he was just a bad sleeper...
We took
the opportunity to drive past part of the Berlin Wall and the Brandenburg Gate
but otherwise our visit to the city was very brief, and we were off again...
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