Travel Tales: Hotels from Hell: True Travel Tales

By Michael Brein

Travel Tales: Hotels from Hell

Is a collection of travel stories of one of the most basic experiences and needs of travelers, namely, securing safe and secure lodging during their travels. Indeed, of the nearly 2,000 travelers whom I have interviewed over nearly five decades, I've collected and chronicled the phenomenal, the good, the wonderful, and the fascinating of all sorts of aspects of hotels and lodging of travelers' stays. I've recorded as well for posterity their best stories in the form of ebooks, paperbacks, and audiobooks, just about anything and everything noteworthy that defines what the hotel and lodging aspects of their travel experience are all about. And along with these stories I've chronicled as well some of the not-so-good and not-so-wonderful sorts of risks and dangers of travel that travelers sometimes face with regard to their hotels and lodging. You might say I've studied and analyzed as best as I could the essence of travel safety and security while traveling abroad to countries around the world. The books in my True Travel Tales series include travel stories of just about anything and everything to do with lodging — all the sorts of situations that travelers may face in their adventures about their stays in hotels and lodges. Many stories are about the good and wondrous aspects of travel. And sometimes stories may even include the fascinating as well as sometimes the paranormal and psychic aspects of travel, too, and, yes, even the occasional strange and the bizarre. In all, this is a book on the psychology of travel with a focus on hotels and lodging in travel. And in this look at hotels and lodging in travel, we take a somewhat broader expanded look, and in some cases, we include hostels, campgrounds, safari lodges, cruise ships as floating hotels, and even as well the notion of a VW camper as a traveling hotel!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Michael Brein
• Release date: Feb 11, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215609255

Michael Brein

Michael Brein, also known as the Travel Psychologist, is an author, lecturer, travel storyteller, adventurer, and publisher of travel books and guides as well as books on UFOs and the Paranormal. He recently appeared as a guest on CNN, and is regularly quoted in the news media and blogs, and is an invited guest on Internet radio programs on the psychology of travel as well as UFOs and the paranormal. Michael is the first person to coin the term ‘travel psychology.’ Through his doctoral studies, work and life experiences, and extensive world travels, he has become the world's first travel psychologist. His travel guide series, Michael Brein's Travel Guides to Sightseeing by Public Transportation, shows travelers how to sightsee the top 50 visitor attractions in the world's most popular cities easily and cheaply by public transportation. Michael also publishes his True Travel Tales series, a collection of books of the best of 10,000 travel stories shared with him from interviews with nearly 2,000 world travelers and adventurers Michael has encountered in his own extensive world travels. Finally, Michael also publishes The Road to Strange series on the true accounts of people who have had sightings of UFOs or experiences of the paranormal. Michael Brein resides on Bainbridge Island, Washington. His website is www.michaelbrein.com, and his email is [e-mail].

Book preview

Part 1: Funny Hotel Stays

The Doubtless Funny Side of Hotels

Some Silly Hotel Stories

The Grand Hotel San Marino

Free Run of the Hotel from Heaven in San Marino

Although the hotel from heaven for sure, but there’s hell to pay to get it!

They say there is no free lunch. Although this is generally true, actually I can say that there is! And when this happens to you in your travels, it can be a special momentous occasion. But even though the lunch (and MUCH more) might be free, there’s still hell to pay to get it!

By author Michael. This is my story of the San Marino hotel from hell!

And although the breakfasts, lunches, and dinners (and room, and airfare!) were ‘on the house,’ so to speak, there was a certain, unintended hidden surprise.

The ‘Scoundrel’ in me is always looking for a bargain, and this time, he (I) surely got his (MY) un-money's worth!

I am in Europe researching two cities — Amsterdam and Vienna — for my travel guide series on sightseeing by public transportation. I heard that there was an annual UFO conference going on in the Republic of San Marino, a small independent country inside Italy, in the mountains, an hour from Bologna. It's the filming location of the famous movie, The Mouse that Roared, starring the renowned Peter Sellers.

It’s an interesting conference attracting UFOlogists and other UFO buffs, mostly from Italy, but also from the rest of Europe and elsewhere. So, I email the person in charge of the conference, whom I already knew from my comings and goings in UFOlogy. I say that I am in Europe, and can I attend the conference?

Sure, he replies, please come as our guest.

Of course, I am not exactly sure what he means by guest, but the word guest is always eagerly welcomed. I assume that maybe the conference fees may be waived, something like that. But, boy, was I in for a surprise!

He further indicates that I can hitch a ride with one of the speakers, one Antonio Huneeus — a distinguished world-renowned UFOlogist in his own right — with whom I was already acquainted, and who also would be flying to Bologna to the conference from Frankfurt, Germany I could catch a limo ride with him to San Marino.

So, the plan is now hatched. I am to meet him in the waiting area by the gate at Frankfurt Airport, take the same flight with him, and then ride with him to San Marino.

I arrive early for the flight and do spot Antonio indeed seated and sound asleep in a chair.

So, what does the ‘Scoundrel’ in me do? I smack him (lightly) with a newspaper and startle him awake. Hmm, maybe not too good to do THAT to anyone!

He opens his eyes, accommodates to his surroundings, looks up at me, and says words to me, which are still reverberating in my mind to this very day, I hear you are speaking at the conference.

"SPEAKING AT THE CONFERENCE? (I scream to myself in my internal mind, and manage to barely voice aloud, Antonio, You've got to be joking! Nobody’s told me anything about speaking! Are you sure you're not just getting back at me for startling you with the newspaper? It’s got to be a joke, right?

WRONG!

"No, no! he goes. You're speaking on Saturday morning."

(This is Thursday, mind you.) My god, I am just terrified. Not only am I expected to speak, but I have absolutely NO idea what I will talk about! Nothing with me, no visuals, no prepared talk, NOTHING

I mean, that this is to be in front of hundreds of people, mainly an Italian audience, with undoubtedly very high expectations of a slate of famous speakers from all over the world. They IMPORT speakers — and very famous ones at that!

And now I've discovered that they've imported ME!

Now, I did manage to earn the respect, over the years, of the international director of MUFON (the Mutual UFO Network) and numerous researchers in the field, and so, it was no surprise that I actually got appointed to the position of Ambassador-at-Large for MUFON.

Well, the position was actually created just for me because I was known as a world traveler in my own right so I could liaise for MUFON. But, a world-class speaker on the subject of UFOs I was and am not!

So, now, in the eyes of the organizer of the conference — and also the MUFON director for Italy — I am, after all, THE Ambassador for MUFON — and now, one among the coterie of invited ‘guests’ to speak at the conference. The trouble is, nobody bothered to tell me until I just happened to fortuitously run into Antonio. He drops the news on me like a bomb. What am I to do?

The good news is actually pretty terrific. And there's no bad news. And, the best news of all — and a pure delight to the ‘Scoundrel’ in me — is that I’m to get full room and board for the duration of the conference as well as the airfare to and from San Marino from Amsterdam!

And, the better news is that the speaking slot is only a half-hour per speaker. Still, what to do? A half-hour, though not much in ordinary living, can seem like an eternity when you are totally unprepared.

So, imagine this scene: the Ambassador, along with the famous speaker, Antonio Huneeus, are whizzing along in a limo from the Bologna Airport to San Marino, about an hour away.

The trip is uneventful except for, I suppose, the lightning speed of the limo. CRAZY drivers, those Italians!

Hmm, I wonder, could this be a disguised flying saucer?

We arrive at the main hotel venue for us, and I am very impressed. It is, after all, THE Grand Hotel, no less — one of the premier hotels in San Marino at the time. We are literally treated as royalty.

We are assigned our rooms, and all is explained to us, except, of course, as to anything relevant to my speaking engagement at this conference.

I am running amok trying to put something together to speak about. I try to create some sorts of visuals. I try to arrange to show my website, even. Every technological approach to being able to come up with something interesting and entertaining for the audience fails miserably.

I even try in vain to allot my speaking slot to one of the other very famous speakers. Extra time for you!

They all decline. All say that I will do just fine.

I cannot imagine how they could have imputed such confidence to me. Maybe they hope I would just go away. Even the director of the conference really has no suggestions, in particular, to offer.

"Tell them some of your Ambassador stories," was one feeble suggestion.

So, what am I to do? Well, the ‘Actor’ in me finally comes to the fore. I decide to speak about an interesting case I was working on that suggests the possibility of aliens interspersed among us in human civilization.

Every word I say reverberates in headsets throughout the auditorium, either in Italian or English — you choose. It is, indeed, an interesting case, and the audience of 700 people or so seems to be mesmerized by my story.

Suddenly, I hear behind me something like, Five minutes! (remaining).

Whew, I not only get through it all, but several audience members afterward actually come up to me to discuss the case further. If it was a total failure, I'm sure this would not have occurred. And, I hear nothing mentioned about my talk from anyone, so I assume I weathered it okay.

The mouse (from the famous movie) apparently roared once again on that day! However, this time it was only ME, the Ambassador mouse for MUFON.

The ‘Scoundrel’ in me was very proud to have scored such a phenomenal weekend in San Marino. Not that I scammed this intentionally, but the ‘Innocent’ in me was not quite up to how the world actually works.

The ‘Actor,’ the ‘Scoundrel,’ the ‘Ufologist,’ the ‘Innocent,’ the ‘Adventurer,’ and the ‘Sage’ in me all synced together to create one magnificent event. Perhaps this brought me one step closer to becoming the ‘Cosmic Man!’ — or should I say, ‘mouse?’

The Rome Hotel from Hell

That Guests Nearly Destroy!

Funny Horrific or HELL-ific Hotels from Hell

As told to me by my cousin, Jeffrey Brein, about a friend of his, Mark B., and his wife, who experienced what can only be described as a (hilarious) hotel from hell embarrassing close call where they stayed for one fateful night on a trip to Italy gone totally wrong.

In the early 1980s, these two friends had traveled to Italy from California for some 12 or 14 hours of flying with a series of connecting flights from California to New York, to London, and then finally on to Italy.

They arrived at a hotel in a small village outside Rome for which they thought they had, according to their travel agent, confirmed reservations. They got in very late in the afternoon, Italy time, which for them was the jet lag equivalent of an ungodly morning hour back home in California.

So, understandably, after an exhausting and nearly sleepless night of flying, they finally arrived at the desk of this small hotel desperate to check in.

They already had paid a deposit to the travel agent who should have or likely had forwarded this on to this very small hotel.

However, the desk clerk told them that not only did he not have their deposit, neither did he have their reservation, and what’s worse, the hotel was full!

Naturally, my friend became very agitated and angry and DEMANDED immediately to speak to the manager of the hotel. But he was told that the manager, unfortunately, was not in at the moment.

Mark then naturally asked where he could find the manager of the hotel.

He was given an odd address and told, You can find the manager; he's only a couple of blocks away, and this is the address.

So, Mark dutifully says to his wife, You go park the car and wait back here in the hotel lobby for me. I'll go find the manager of the hotel, and I'll get this all straightened out.

Mark then sets out on foot and some ten minutes later arrives at the address only to discover that the address he’s been given by the desk clerk is none other than the town’s own Police Department, where the manager of the hotel just happens to be visiting for whatever reason. Perhaps for reasons that will shortly be evident, how timely propitious or horrendous, or auspicious this arrival could turn out to be for reasons we shall see shortly!

Mark then enters the police station and asks for the visiting hotel manager. Understandably, he has not a little problem with the language, but after about ten minutes of verbal wrangling, out comes the hotel manager!

My friend then begins to argue with this hotel manager that he had been given an inordinate very rough time back at the hotel and that his deposit had been forwarded by the travel agent to the hotel, and so on, and, of course, on and on ad nauseum.

The manager, however, apparently refuses to cooperate and is rather rude, and somewhat of a shouting match ensues right there in the police station no less between Mark and the manager.

And while all this is going on, there’s presumably apparently an additional huge commotion going on in the background, and Mark turns around and sees two policemen carrying in none other than his wife into the police station!

For she has apparently somehow managed to park the car in the police chief's very own parking space of all possible places, and Mark’s wife, being unable to speak Italian at all, became very belligerent with a policeman over the parking space.

And now they decide they’re going to arrest her no less.

It gets waaay better!

So, now she's dragged kicking and screaming right into the police station. And my friend’s in the middle of arguing with the hotel manager, and on top of this, she's now arguing with the police. You can just imagine the scene! It’s the stuff of movies, I tell you!

Finally, they all manage to calm their feelings and outbursts down to a bare minimum, and the hotel manager now finally agrees and proceeds to say, Well, okay, I'll give you a room, but we'll check into all of this over the next couple of days. But I'll give you the room in the meantime.

And after an interpreter is called in, his wife is finally released from police custody, and they now go back to the hotel. And apparently, all’s well that ends well. Or does it?

Mark and his wife are finally shown up to their room. They're exhausted. They go in, take off their clothes and jump in the shower to wash off.

They turn the faucet on, but nothing at all comes out of the showerhead. Not a drop! Next, they go to the sink, figuring they'll give themselves sponge baths instead.

But to absolutely no avail! Absolutely nothing comes out of the sink faucet! The shower is turned on; the sink is turned on — nothing at all! Niente!

They're furious. Who wouldn’t be? So, they get dressed and go downstairs.

Mark furiously bangs his fist on the counter and hollers in the lobby and complains, We've come all this way; we didn't have a room; now we get into the room, and there's no water. What’ll we do?

The desk clerk goes, Well, look, we’ll get it repaired right away. We’ve had the water turned off; we'll turn the water back on. But it won't be for about an hour.

Why don’t you just go out and have a meal, your dinner or breakfast, whatever the case may be, and by the time you get back, we'll have your water back on for you. Okay?

I mean in the least, it sounds reasonable, but from Mark’s and his wife’s perspective, of course, we can appreciate their disgust and anger.

So, naturally, they left without any choice in the matter.

They then proceed to take a walk and go have a meal. They then return to the hotel about an hour later, ready to try it all over yet again, now totally exhausted and dirty, and as you can well imagine, totally disgruntled!

As they enter the hotel courtyard area, there are all kinds of commotion going on. People are all running around everywhere, right and left, hollering and shouting incoherently and so on.

And my friend, Mark, now very coyly walks up to someone who is standing nearby and asks, What’s going on here? What’s all the commotion?

And, having not the least notion of who he is talking to, the gentleman looks at him and says, "They're two stupid American tourists here who left all the faucets on in their room. And when we turned the water back on, of course, it flooded their room and the entire floor — all the rooms!"

And lo-and-behold, Mark suddenly realizes they had forgotten in their haste and disgust to turn the faucets off — neither the shower nor the sink! The water had been left turned on and it gushed out and apparently overflowed onto the whole floor!

They’re standing there, and in the corner of their eyes, Mark spots the hotel manager and the chief of police approaching.

Uh-oh! So, my friend quickly grabs his room key, and they rush up to the room slipping past the maintenance man, eluding the mopper-uppers, managing in the process to shoo them out of the room, lock the door, and retire for the evening, amidst the soggy carpet and all as well nursing their very bruised egos.

They get up very, very early the next morning, quickly pay for the one single night, and check out of the room, leaving all the while two or three days early.

They never hear from the hotel again. Nor does Mark ever pursue trying to get his deposit back, which he felt was considerably less than what they probably would have been charged for damaging an apparent entire suite of hotel rooms probably on their entire floor at the hotel.

So, that was that — the story of the Italy hotel from hell that two crazy stupit American scoundrels apparently destroyed an entire floor of rooms through absolutely no fault of their own!

Welcome to Italy!

The Hotel Bois de Boulogne

The Whorehouse Hotel

The cab driver started to laugh uncontrollably. He said, You don’t owe me even a penny! I got the best story, and I'll be the hit of all the cab drivers. I’ll tell the story to all the other cabbies. You’ve given me the best story I have ever heard! You owe me NOT even a penny!

The Arrival

As told to me by Paul and Mildred Buck. It is 1961, and we were attending an international conference in Berlin. We had arranged to go from Berlin to Paris, and we had a hotel already reserved for us there, as I was going to be visiting some professors at a university in France.

When we arrived at the hotel, there was quite a bit of activity in the lobby, and we went up to the desk to confirm our registration, and they said we were bumped. And I said, Bumped?

Yes, the FBI and the CIA were all in this hotel, because the President of the United States and his wife had come to Paris, and they were not in the hotel, but the FBI and the CIA had taken this hotel over.

Author Michael: Well, if you were bumped, at least you knew the reasons. Was there another hotel available somewhere?

Paul: Oh, no.

Michael: It was no joy for you at this point. What time of the day was this?

Paul: It was about ten o'clock in the morning.

Michael: How did you feel when you heard that? What could you do?

Paul: My God, it was John F. Kennedy and Jaqueline! The French were simply thrilled at having Jackie Kennedy in Paris. It was a case of our being in the wrong place at the wrong time apparently.

So, we went out hunting for hotels, but every hotel was just booked. I finally ended up in a very small hotel that had a very steep stairway.

We were up on the sixth floor. And the steep stairway had a railing. And our children, who accompanied us, especially Keith, our son, simply would just love to climb onto the railing and slide down all six floors!

However, Mildred, my wife, would have none of that at all, and so decided we should look for another hotel.

The man that was running that hotel happened to be an Italian who had been in the service in the Italian Army, and he had known I had been a veteran. So, he understood why we wanted to move because of the children.

So, he said, Well, I’ll try to find you another hotel.

But he couldn’t find one, so I went out on the street and started walking and walking. And I walked, and I walked, and I finally walked into this one hotel nearby the famous Paris park, the Bois de Boulogne (the Boulogne Woods). By this time, I wasn’t quite sure where I was in Paris.

The woman behind the desk frowned. I was at that time speaking mostly English because I had just met an Italian at a restaurant with whom I was also speaking English. So, I guess to her I was the uncultured, ugly American. But so be it.

So, not really knowing her nationality, necessarily, I spoke to her in English, which did not necessarily win me any brownie points. She spoke some English, however. And seemingly reluctantly, and finally overcoming a bit of a ‘French attitude,’ she finally agreed to do it and invited my wife and three children and me to come in. So, we did.

It wasn’t very long after we were there that we realized they had a very active ‘trade’ going on! And it was this that was at the root of the night clerk’s reluctance — not anything cultural at all, as it turns out!

Mildred was amused because she would watch the very expensive cars drive up, and the chauffeurs, if there were any, would just sit patiently in the cars, letting them idle, while their charges would simply dash right into the hotel, do their business, and after a mere five or six minutes later, would dash right back out to their cars and drive off.

On the second floor, ‘Grandma’ happened to be — we find out — the owner of the hotel, and she was just a lovely woman.

And I would speak French with her.

She just enjoyed our children so much; she gathered them around her. She couldn't do enough for them and even bought little gifts for the children, so we were all really having a great time.

Out on the Town

Paul: But the story really starts when we would go out for the evenings.

I originally had made arrangements with the professors to have graduate student girls come in and babysit for us.

So, when I told the front desk that we were going out and that I had arranged for babysitters, they insisted, "Oh, mais no, no, no. Pas du tous!" (Oh, not at all!)

They would supply babysitters. Well, they’d go, No, no! You cancel that! We’ll supply the babysitters!

Truth be told, they wouldn’t want any outside French girls coming into their establishment. They would simply have none of that! It was not allowed, period!

So, we arranged they would do the babysitting, and there were these beautiful young women who were babysitting our children.

And so, after going to a good restaurant, and having a great dinner, we’d go out to the cab, we’d climb in, and typically