A toothbrush at midnight? You’re joking, senorita

by Yeoh Siew Hoon

The taxi drops me off outside my hotel in Rome, the Hotel Isa on Via Cicerone. It’s 7am on a Sunday morning – the holiest of days in the holiest of cities.

The one male staff manning the desk at the Hotel Isa watches as I struggle with my suitcases through the narrow door. Question: Why is it that everything is so small in Europe when the people are so big?

I give him my details. He’s got my room. Unfortunately, “it’s not ready”, he says. “Too early.”

I try my “I’ve been on a 12-hour flight” routine but it doesn’t work. He shrugs his shoulders, looks at his watch and points at the time. “Not possible.”

He suggests I have breakfast at the rooftop and wait while they get my room ready. “He will take you,” he says, pointing to a Filipino-looking staff who’s suddenly appeared at the desk.

He turns out to be a Filipino and he does everything around the hotel. He’s the porter, butler, usher, waiter, room attendant and he makes fresh blood orange juice and coffee for guests every morning – which he did for me all three days I was there.

In Asia, we’d have six people doing his job. He’s been in Italy 10 years, married an Italian woman and has two children. I asked him if he enjoyed his job. He shrugs his shoulders. “No choice.”

In Rome, I found waiters very willing to share their stories. At one restaurant, the waiter started talking about the elections that were taking place in Italy that week. “We need change, it is impossible to live, everything is so expensive.”

I thought he was talking about Singapore actually but given that he hadn’t been to our fine city, it was highly unlikely.

His son has just married and moved to a “very small, tiny” flat. “You know how much a month? 1,900 Euros. Crazy.”

“This restaurant? You know how much rent? 25,000 Euros a month. It’s impossible.”

I thought it was only in Asia that people are so forthcoming about money matters – you know, the taxi driver in Kuala Lumpur who will ask you how much you earn a month or friends who come round your apartment and insist on knowing the price of everything – but no, it seems money is a universal lament these days.

Or you could also say that in Rome, every waiter is an Italian opera in the telling.

In Berlin, I returned to my hotel, the Kron Prinz, one morning at 3am. The front door is locked. Feeling like a naughty girl who’s been out longer than she should, I ring the bell. A man opens the door. He’s also the night manager, receptionist, telephone operator …

I ask for a wake-up call at 6am as I am catching an 8am Easyjet flight to Paris. (Question: Why do we travellers do this to ourselves?)

He looks at his watch, looks up at me sternly and asks, “Would you like a taxi?” (He’s obviously also a taxi booker.)

In Madrid, at the Novotel Puenta de la Paz, I realised I needed a toothbrush at midnight. I called down to reception and asked if housekeeping could bring me a toothbrush. (Old Asian habits die hard – we are used to having people do things for us in hotels.)

The voice on the line said, “I am alone here, I can’t leave the desk.”

Muttering, I put on my clothes and go down to reception. True enough, he is alone and he is attending to one check-in while the telephone is ringing. Probably someone else needing a toothbrush.

I wait in line, like a good little girl, to be handed my toothbrush.

Ah, travelling in Europe does have its joys.

I imagine though that one day, as labour costs rise in Asia, and staff get harder to find, hotels in Asia may well have to go that way – that’s when we will need folks like Mr Filipino at Hotel Isa to return and show us how it’s done.

Read more of Yeoh Siew Hoon every week at The Transit Cafe – www.thetransitcafe.com