September 4, 2006: Peeping Toms

I just can’t NOT comment on the hotel we stayed in in Maastricht while we were at WEG... It was too, er, unusual. Yes, I think unusual would sum it up just about right.

I’ve tried to think how to describe it several times, and I must admit that on the first attempts, words failed me... but perhaps now I’ve got it. It can only have been decorated by an Interior Decorator that had visited a few too many of those other types of bars in Amsterdam and then returned home to dream about visits to the United States, New York in particular, with the Hard Rock Cafe, Harley Davidson Dealer, and the World Trade Center either newly demolished or under construction in mind... And then, to top it off, a freakish sort of sense of humor.

It was quite comfortable, mind you... a Four Star facility, with comfortable beds, quiet rooms, and windows that “capsized only,” which after some puzzlement, we figured out meant that they only leaned inward into the room to open, rather than sliding up/down or to the side. Rather interesting translation into English, we thought...

But the decor: murals of New York scenes complete with graffiti in the lobby and common areas, neon everywhere, in an orange/red/black color scheme (entire walls! in our room in orange, with black laminate furniture) and re-bar accents right down to the towel hangers and drawer pulls. Re-bar: must have spent an absolute FORTUNE on that touch!

And the pièce de resistance was in the bathroom: a vast expanse of clean, sparkling white until you sit on the toilet to do your business (being female), and then you look in front of you, and you see a pair of rather sexy eyes peering at you... eyes that have a rather uncanny resemblance to Tom Cruise’s in one bathroom, and the romance novel model’s Fabio’s in another! JUST the eyes, as if the rest of the gentleman (or not such a gentleman, given the leer) is on the other side of the wall, imagining what he’d like to do to you once you exit the stall. It’s rather unsettling, and if you didn’t have a case of BB (bashful bladder) before, you most certainly did AFTER you caught sight of the Peeping Tom!

The gentleman traveling with us told us that they had similar “company” in the men’s room...