The last time I was in Florence, I was 19 years old. I was studying abroad and had the wide expanse of a month to cavort all over Europe. While details have become somewhat fuzzy over space and time, what I do recall is arriving in Florence by train at 1am with no place to stay. After some phone calls and much gesticulating (which seems to help in Italy, even over the phone), I found a room, and dragged myself and my friend Kari to the hotel.
The man at the reservation desk sat behind a glass wall, the ash of his cigarette extending out an impressive two inches. He peered at me and yelled through the glass, which had no discernible opening "HOW LONG YOU WANT THE ROOM FOR?" I didn't understand what he could possibly mean and screamed back "THE WHOLE NIGHT?" at which he raised his eyebrows, his ash finally falling onto his lap. A slot suddenly extended out from the wall, bearing our key. I stepped backwards, running directly into Kari who had been merely inches off my back, staring in fear at the old men who were sitting in the lobby, leering at her.
We struggled up to the room which offered the most spartan of amenities, if any at all. What stood out, though, were two things. One, was that the shower was in the middle of the room. And it was glass. Kari and I were close, but we both were wondering how we were going to get clean with some semblance of privacy. And the other was that there was this odd rope hanging from the ceiling next to the shower. Kari walked over to it and said "I wonder what this is for?" simultaneously giving it a hearty tug. Two seconds later, the phone rang. We looked at each other, surprised, and Kari said "YOU answer it...this place gives me the creeps." I picked up the receiver, holding it away from my ear as it didn't look particularly clean and said, loudly "YES?"
"ARE YOU ALRIGHT? YOU WANT I SHOULD CALL POLICE?" It was the man from the front desk, his diction somewhat muffled by the cigarette I knew was still in his mouth.
"Um...we're fine, thanks."
"Oh, well you yank on emergency cord. It's what prostitute use if customer is mean."
That was a lot for my little 19 year old brain to absorb. He went on to explain that we shouldn't yank the cord unless we really needed help. I hung up the phone without saying anything else and just stared at it for a while. Kari, looking at me quizzically and said "Well?"
"Well, apparently, we are staying in a brothel and I should only pull on that rope if you're doing a BAD touch. Otherwise, we're good."
We slept with the dresser pushed up against the door that night. And changed hotels in the morning.
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Winter break the week after Christmas. My Junior year in college abroad. London. Very similar story.
Decided to go to London for a week and crash with some new friends we met in France on a train. We were all American students studying in Europe and we had given them our address in Rome, and they gave us their address in London. Finally get there only to find out that they had ended their semester and returned to the states and now we had no place to stay in London! Crap. This was in the years before email and cellphones, and we were leaving a carefree life in Europe with our backpacks. Gotta find a place to stay. I don't remember how we found the place we eventually showed up at, but it must've been because a random drug addict had referred us of that I'm sure. The "manager" and his two friends had bad hygiene and scruffy beards. They gave us our room key and sent us upstairs while they returned to hovering over something unseen on the kitchen table. Black heroin, a candle, and a syringe? Probably. We march up and enter a room with a bunkbed on one wall, a table, a lighbulb hanging from the ceiling, and a window. We looked at each other and both agreed that we would ONLY be staying here one night because it was late, and we apparently didn't have any common sense. Exhausted we both decide to call it a night, lock the door, and leave extremely early the next morning. Problem. We can't lock the door because the lock is busted and we're in a London crack house. Nice. Go down to the "manager" and explain the problem. "Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you. It doesn't lock and that's our last room." I failed to ask why he had given us a KEY since it seemed moot. We decide that we will brace the door with the table. I get on one side, my friend on the other, and we pick up the table simultaneously. However, the table top was not attached to the table legs and then all four legs fell to the floor in unison. Oh yeah, we're feeling extra safe. My friend gets in the lower bunk, and I climb up to the top bunk. The top bunk mattress then sags within a couple of inches from my friend on the lower bunk. Why? Oh, that's easy. Because someone took out all of the metal or woden mattress supports to sell for a few quid to buy drugs no doubt and replaced them with a worn out old nylon rope.
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