The Blog of Survival Part 3

 

I already mentioned how a good intention can go horribly wrong, and suggested some useful tips and strategies.

This is a similar scenario. Good intention is present, but at the end, the purses, credit cards, passports, and mobiles are missing, while you are in an unknown town, in a strange car, driving only the GPS knows where.

The strategy in this case will be different. Let me explain.

I love hotels. Todays hotels are just a work of art with the most fascinated bits of IT thrown in to entertain guests.
I love to stalk in to our new room and check everything out.

The keys are not keys any more, they are cards with chips, they are in charge of your electricity, they lock your room, and they can be programmed to lock you out of your room if its after checkout time. I am also fascinated by hotel room safes. I just can't help myself. I need to try and find out how they operate. Some use fingerprints, and they are the most fascinated ones.

As you have probably guessed, I put a lot of things in the safe, but I always give them out when they are needed again.
  I also love to have a good run around the hotel, check the lifts, check the gym, and whatever else the hotel may have to offer.

A lot of doors operate using the magic card from the room. The chip on this card is also needed to operate the lifts. It's great.

When I am comparing this to my own house, some hotels are a hundred years in the future.

The room itself has a lot of buttons to operate central heating, Air Conditioning, lighting, the blinds, etc.
  The lamp switch is not a simple lamp switch in a good hotel. It usually is a multi functional digital device. You can co-ordinate the intensity of lights, number of lamps, or a combination of lights in your room.

  I am sure you understand this is a fascinating adventure, and every new hotel room has to be checked out, thoroughly.

The hotel where we had to stay when we broke down in the middle of France was not that great. I mean come on! The only technology was a remote control, which we know is last century. There was not much to do.

My attention only briefly touched the three coats which we put on the chair. This is a crucial moment. We will come back to this.

I mentioned there wasn't much to do, and I wanted to check the wardrobes anyway, as you can sometimes find interesting things there.

All I did was put the three coats on proper hangers in the wardrobe, closing the doors.

We were rushing in the morning.
  A Taxi was already waiting. Our car was in the garage and they couldn't repair it for a couple of days. We hired a new car and set the satellite navigation.
  The journey started to be quite a challenge.

Strange car. Steering wheel on the left side. Unknown town. Limited luggage, as we had to leave half of it in our broken down car.
  My dad suddenly started to look for his mobile. Then for his wallet. Then for his coat. Alarms started going off in my head.
  I suddenly realised I don't know where my coat is, and of course, mums coat was missing also. If you remember one of my blogs, when you try to be quiet and invisible, this is a very different situation, and the strategy will be quite the opposite to the previous one. 

Speak up as quickly as you can, preferably before you made the first hundred miles. You say it simply and clearly: don't worry.

When I said I put the coats in the wardrobe, in the hotel room, my parents just stared at me for several seconds.

This is the moment when you don't budge and hold your ground. The bottom line is, the coats belonged to the wardrobe and everybody has forgotten theirs, so I only held 1/3 of the guilt for forgetting my own.

You can also suggest a little favour at this point which will add some much needed good points to you.

I grabbed the SatNav and typed in the address of the hotel from the hotel bill.

And that's is really, you hand the case over to your parents unless you are at the age when you can drive them to the hotel.

All went well, the coats were retrieved with all the documents, wallets and the mobile phones.

It took us 3 hours to drive to Geneva. Two days later we will be driving back 3 hours to pick up our repaired car. This should not include any hotels, but if there are any new adventures you will be surely the first ones to know!

So stay tuned in!