Essen business hotel
Last weekend, I stayed in the InterCityHotel in Essen, Germany. It was a perfectly pleasant business hotel, handily located for the central train station. But it did one thing differently that pleased me enormously.
Fruit juice for breakfast
Call me a glutton, but I like to drink more than a thimbleful of water or fruit juice in the morning. At home, nothing other than wine or spirits will ever enter a glass that is smaller than 330ml. Yet in most hotels, I’m presented with tiny, pathetic vessels at breakfast. They’re usually little better than shot glasses.
Refill runs
The only way of getting even vaguely ample levels of liquid sustenance is to fill up three of the feeble pots, then try and walk back to the table with them precariously balanced on my plate, or to go back three times to refill.
I know it’s all about hotels saving money on fruit juice, but it’s mightily annoying.
Larger glasses
In Essen, I nearly leapt with happiness. The glasses at InterCityHotel were a good 250ml. That’s almost acceptably large – fantastic. I didn’t have to do the glass-juggling thing. And if I wasn’t so greedy, I wouldn’t have had to embark upon even one of the refill missions.
Glasses in hotel rooms
Other hotels, take note. Oh, and while you’re at it, put a decent-sized glass in my room so that I don’t have to continually walk to the tap in order to fill your midget version up with water.
Wow, you’re really taking grump to a new level, David.
I don’t bother taking thimbles back to my table. I stand at the fruit juice table, fill glass, drink, fill glass, drink, fill glass, drink, fill glass and THEN walk away.
As for glasses in hotel rooms – blimey; you don’t actually DRINK from them, do you? Very bad idea. Or, if you do, you do wash them out with soap and hot water first, right? There are many nationalities staying in hotels around the world for whom toilet paper is a foreign and extremely unhygienic invention – they use water to ablute with, which is why in many countries there’s some kind of tap/nozzle system beside the toilet. In European hotels, no such tap system is in place – so the only solution for these fastidious types is to find some kind of vessel, fill it with water and take it with you to the lavvy for purposes of dipping and redipping the left hand. Sometimes it’s the water glass, sometimes it’s a tea cup, sometimes it’s the mini-kettle…
Um, thanks Matthew. Lovely image. *Starts spitting furiously*.
The thimbles invariably go hand in hand with filthy grey coffee too. The very thought is making me scowl.
While we’re at it… let’s have a go at ridiculous hotel charges for bottles of water
Not to mention the very naughty habit of scattering bottles of expensive water – Evian and the like – around the hotel room, including the bedside table! Come on folks, that’s just evil. Leave them in the mini-bar where I can ignore them.
Oh please PLEASE don’t drink from the glasses in hotel rooms. For that matter, don’t drink from the coffee cups either – unless you have poured boiling hot water into them first and given them a good wash.
And WHY? you might ask.
Glasses and coffee cups are cleaned by the very same person who cleans your toilet / bath / shower and basin – and who’s to say she doesn’t use the very same cloth? or is still wearing her rubber glove she just cleaned the toilet with? Sounds unreal – well here is hidden camera footage of just that.
http://www.break.com/index/nev.....-room.html
or here
http://www.snotr.com/video/662
lam