1969 European Holiday: Hotel Hell
Jul. 9th, 2019 06:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ashetlandponyI may as well get the unpleasant stuff out of the way first. One of the main sources of my disaffection with Denmark was our accommodations. In complete contrast to the cosmopolitan comforts of the Regent Palace in London, the „Hotel Minerva” in Copenhagen was as cold and spartan as a college dormitory. In fact, it turned out it was a college dormitory for most of the year!
The rooms were tiny, and the 'beds' were actually convertible sofas that consisted of nothing more than an upholstered cushion on a solid wood frame. Pure torture. Even more painful was the food served in the hotel's restaurants. It was uniformly flavorless, the servers surly, even the paintings on the walls were aesthetically repellent.
As the days passed, though, I gradually realized that it wasn't just this one hotel that had horrible food. Cooked meat served at anything warmer than room temperature seemed to be an utterly alien concept in Denmark, as was this thing the rest of the world knows as 'spice'. Heck, you couldn't even find a decent hamburger in that entire country back then!
Mom and Florence at the infamous „Restaurant Solbakken” buffet, Hotel Minerva.
It was also at this hotel that I was first introduced to the 'continental breakfast'. As an American, I'm used to a hearty morning meal that included, at minimum, eggs and meat, and generally some potatoes, pancakes or french toast on the side. Here, however, they served nothing but cereal, dried out pastries, stale bread, and some rank, frankly inedible pasty fish concoction whose name I've long forgotten. And coffee, of course, however at 14, that was not yet my idea of something to drink first thing in the morning, if at all.
Anyway, here are Mother and I in the hotel's breakfast room. Look how forced my smile is. It's a sign of how little I cared for the country that, in our entire album, there isn't a single photo of me in Denmark where I have a genuinely happy expression on my face.
An attentive reader may have noticed that I posted this picture here before, 12 years ago, also then mentioning what an awful time I had in Denmark. But, enough. I've wasted way too much time working on this post already. Onward to some marginally more enjoyable memories now.
The rooms were tiny, and the 'beds' were actually convertible sofas that consisted of nothing more than an upholstered cushion on a solid wood frame. Pure torture. Even more painful was the food served in the hotel's restaurants. It was uniformly flavorless, the servers surly, even the paintings on the walls were aesthetically repellent.
As the days passed, though, I gradually realized that it wasn't just this one hotel that had horrible food. Cooked meat served at anything warmer than room temperature seemed to be an utterly alien concept in Denmark, as was this thing the rest of the world knows as 'spice'. Heck, you couldn't even find a decent hamburger in that entire country back then!
Mom and Florence at the infamous „Restaurant Solbakken” buffet, Hotel Minerva.
It was also at this hotel that I was first introduced to the 'continental breakfast'. As an American, I'm used to a hearty morning meal that included, at minimum, eggs and meat, and generally some potatoes, pancakes or french toast on the side. Here, however, they served nothing but cereal, dried out pastries, stale bread, and some rank, frankly inedible pasty fish concoction whose name I've long forgotten. And coffee, of course, however at 14, that was not yet my idea of something to drink first thing in the morning, if at all.
Anyway, here are Mother and I in the hotel's breakfast room. Look how forced my smile is. It's a sign of how little I cared for the country that, in our entire album, there isn't a single photo of me in Denmark where I have a genuinely happy expression on my face.
An attentive reader may have noticed that I posted this picture here before, 12 years ago, also then mentioning what an awful time I had in Denmark. But, enough. I've wasted way too much time working on this post already. Onward to some marginally more enjoyable memories now.
