The Thing About $hithole Places

 Having traveled around the US, Europe and the world...I've occasionally been in some places where the term $hithole fits.

Sometimes, it's an airport.  Sometimes, it's a diner or a 'hole-in-the-wall' restaurant.  Sometimes, it's a hotel.

I went to Berlin once (my first trip).  I didn't plan it....my wife did, and she went heavily economical.  It was on the 'east' side of Berlin...meaning it was over in the old Russian-held sector...about seven years after the wall came down.

The tour company had 50 of us (49 Germans and 1 American) to dump there.  This was what I'd call ultra-cheap.  I got my key and was told I'd be on the 10th floor.

Well...I got into the elevator and sized up the buttons.  There was a button for the basement and then 8 buttons.  I looked at the key....nothing 10th floor.  I exited the elevator and in broken German...asked the hotel lady...what the deal was.  She said....just get off the 8th floor and walk up the 2 floors.  

This had been a hotel which had two hidden floors for listening rooms and sensitive stuff (in the old East Germany days).

So I entered the room and unpacked....sitting in a over-sized big chair and staring at the wall.  You see, this was this half-inch crack from the top of the ceiling....down to the floor.  I walked up to it....yeah, there was a slight breeze.  It bothered me.

I probably wasted 3 hours that evening...staring at the crack.

The mattress?  I took off the sheets....some label indicated Romanian made....1969 (this was 1999).  It was a crappy mattress.

The bathroom?  The toilet seat was loose.  Water pressure....on a scale of 1-to-10...was a '1'.  The tub was probably an original one from the 1950s. 

Dinner for that night at the hotel restaurant?  It was not much to brag about.  The beer was average.....but came in a quarter-liter glass....meaning there wasn't much to sip.  The desert?  Around 12 highly sour cherries.

I got up the next day....having one entire day to walk around Berlin.  I walked out front and came upon eight Vietnam guys.  They had some meeting where a driver had arrived with a couple hundred cartons of black-market 'smokes', and they had some 'route' in the city to dispense their stuff.  I asked for subway station....they pointed over.  

I had a pretty nice day.

Then I returned...staring at the wall and the crack....then walked down to dinner.  The next day....the bus came and drove us home.  I didn't say much to the wife about the choice of the $hithole hotel.