Random quote
Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness.

George Orwell (1903-1950)

Travelling around

The house in La Villa near Bagni di Lucca, Italy,
where Montaigne had rented some rooms

When I publish this blog, I have just returned from a holiday in Norway. Norway is one of my favourite holiday destinations because of its beautiful landscapes and nature, so I have been there already many times and I have visited most of the country during the years, from Kristiansand to the North Cape. Only the eastern part of Finnmark in the extreme northeast is waiting yet for my visit. In 2020 my wife and I wanted to make a round trip in Sweden and Norway, to Stockholm and Oslo. However, we had to cancel it because of the pandemic. But at last we could go to Scandinavia again, although now we had chosen another destination: the region between Kristiansand on the south coast and Oslo.
Like often in the summer, we made a round trip without any specific planning. We had chosen the region, so we had booked a ferry to Kristiansand, and we had tickets for the opera in Oslo. But this was all we had planned before we left, so we had to look yet for places where to stay once we were there. It was a bit risky, for most of the time we made such a round trip we had our tent with us and then there is always a place on a camping site where you can stay. But now we had left our tent at home. If you need a camping hut or a hotel room, it’s always possible that they are already fully booked. In the end, it appeared not to be a problem.
I’ll spare you the details of the trip, for this is a philosophical blog and not a travel blog. Anyway, travelling around without a clear planning, is what I like most. However, I would not be a philosopher, if I would not think of the famous journey that Montaigne made in 1580 and 1581. He travelled from the north of France to Switzerland and then via Munich and Augsburg in Germany through Austria to Bagni di Lucca, Florence and Rome in Italy. From Rome he made also a round trip through central Italy. Montaigne returned to France only, when the king had ordered him to do so, because he had appointed him mayor of Bordeaux. Montaigne did so reluctantly and he didn’t hurry to reach Bordeaux.
Montaigne kept a travel diary and so we know much about this trip. From this diary, we get the impression that the journey was an unplanned round trip, in the way I often make them, though the French Montaigne specialist Philippe Desan thinks that Montaigne had a secret mission. Of course, both at the same time is also possible. Anyway, from his diary we know that Montaigne wanted to go to Rome and that his trip had a medical purpose as well, for he wanted to visit medicinal springs, hoping that he would be cured of his problem of kidney stones. So, Montaigne stayed not only several months in what he saw as the capital of the world, but also twice in Bagni di Lucca, a known spa resort in Tuscany. Montaigne stayed also in some other places he liked, so his journey was a bit like my round trips, although mine are usually only very short compared with his travel. But doesn’t everything go faster now than four centuries ago? Think of the current means of transport: In Montaigne’s time, you could not go faster than a horse could run. And when you travelled a long distance, you didn’t go much faster whether you travelled by horseback or on foot. Montaigne tells us in his dairy that, while he and his co-travellers used horses – friends and his younger brother travelled with him during a part of the trip –, their servants walked. Even if they had taken the shortest way to Rome, for this company the trip would have taken, say, two weeks, while nowadays you can do it within a few hours by air or in one or two days by car (depending on where you start in France).
What always has been an enigma for me is: How did Montaigne and his company find their overnight accommodation? Note that Montaigne’s company consisted of some twenty persons. When reading the diary, it never seemed to be a problem (actually Montaigne tells us only where he stayed himself; not where the others slept). Telephone and Internet did not yet exist, so did Montaigne reserve his accommodation by letter? Probably not, for his journey was not well planned, so he didn’t know when to arrive. Moreover, postal services in those days were slow, which could make booking an inn by letter a complicated affair. Did Montaigne (who was the leader of the company) send a servant to the next stop to reserve a place in the local inn? But what if the inn was already fully booked? If another company had already occupied the local inn? Maybe it was not difficult to find a place to stay in a big town like Augsburg, but Montaigne tells us also that he stayed in Seefeld, a little town in Austria, which had probably only one inn (Once when I was in Seefeld, I saw there an inn that was already 500 years old. I wonder whether Montaigne has stayed there). Maybe the inn in Seefeld had enough free rooms, when Montaigne arrived (and maybe the servants slept in a barn or somewhere else in Seefeld). But did it never happen that there was neither place in the local inn nor elsewhere nearby? When your fastest means of transport are your legs or a horse, you cannot go elsewhere to look for a place when the night is falling. But that’s a risk, when making a round trip.

Random quote
If an image is too good to be true, it is probably constructed, they think.

Carel De Keyser (1958-)

Hotel rooms

Look at the photo. It shows a hotel room. To be exact, it’s a hotel room in Brønnøysund in Norway. I took the photo when I was there on holiday many years ago. When on holiday, I always take photos of the hotel rooms where I stay. I didn’t get the idea to do so by myself but from the Belgian photographer Johan de Vos. In the 1990s, he wrote columns in the Dutch photo magazine Foto (which doesn’t exist any longer) about hotel rooms: a photo of the room plus a description and a comment. I liked the column and I decided to take pictures of all hotel rooms where I would stay. So, I did. Therefore, I have photos of all hotel rooms where I have spent the night the past 30 years.
The photo shows an average hotel room. Not really big, not really small. I have stayed in all kinds of hotel rooms during the years; small ones and large ones; simple ones and luxurious ones. But most of the time I stayed in hotel rooms like the one in the photo. You find there everything you need for a short stay: a double bed or two single beds (usually I travel with my wife); a bathroom and a toilet; a desk with a chair; an armchair; a mirror; sometimes a small table; a refrigerator, a TV set and sometimes a safe and a coffee maker, too. In the simplest hotel rooms you only find a bed, while luxurious hotel rooms can have much more, like two or more armchairs plus a bigger table; two TV sets; two rooms; two toilets; etc. The most luxurious hotel room I ever had, had a hall and several rooms and toilets; several TV sets and more, although I had asked only for a standard room. Apparently, the hotel was fully booked and therefore I got this apartment, for the price of a normal room, though not the special service that belonged to the apartment. The simplest hotel I ever had was a road hotel: only a bed and a little bathroom with sink and toilet and hardly any space to move. But let’s talk about a normal, average room like the one in the photo; just comfortable enough to stay there one, two, or maybe three nights but not much longer.
Hotel rooms may differ slightly from country to country, but generally they are everywhere the same. Some differences may exist, however. Hotel rooms in warmer countries often have stone floors and no carpets on the floor. The wall decorations and colours used may show regional influences or have regional pictures. However, especially in the bigger cities hotel rooms are the same all over the world, and often when you see only a picture of the room, you don’t know in which country it is; whether it’s a hotel room in Tokyo, New York or Amsterdam. You find differences mainly between hotel rooms in the countryside and in smaller towns. They may have a local look. But the differences are usually in the details.
A hotel room is a kind of passage. Hardly anybody stays there for a longer time. You come, stay there for a while and go. You take a hotel room only because you need or want to do something in or near the place. It is a temporary residence. Before you come there, another person or couple used the room; when you leave, others will take your place. You don’t know these people and you are also not interested to know them.
Just these characteristics make hotel rooms interesting from a philosophical and sociological point of view. They tell us something about a special category of people: travellers. They tell us what they need for a stay. Therefore, it would be interesting to compare contemporary hotel rooms with hotel rooms in the past and look what has changed. Of course, the TV set has been added in the course of the years, and the refrigerator as well; but what more? Moreover, there are categories of travellers. In the past, travellers were mainly businessmen, merchants and rich people with time and money to make a trip and to go on holiday. When other people travelled, they usually stayed with family, friends and acquaintances, or they didn’t go, and even the just mentioned categories often stayed with people they knew. It would also be interesting to compare hotel rooms for categories of people, and to see what is added to a hotel room if it is more expensive. Or to study regional differences, insofar they exist. It would tell us much about people on the way. For aren’t hotel rooms kind of pictorial descriptions of them?

Random quote
The photographic “shock” … consists less in traumatizing than in revealing what was so well hidden that the actor himself was unaware or unconscious of it.

Roland Barthes (1915-1980)