Seven a.m. on the dot. Alone, I am the first one at breakfast. The buffet is set out and I can hear distant clanging in the kitchen where the breakfast attendant must be preparing. The dining room is located in the basement, but it is a high volume space with tall, luminous panels to give the impression of bright windows. The décor has a faded opulence of the 1920s and I am inclined to believe it is authentic. Art nouveau brass fixtures and railings, a grand staircase sweeping down in a gentle, confident curve, heroic wall frescoes. Piped-in music plays vintage twenties tunes in Czech or German, replete with that tinny mono sound that imagines capturing some lost reflected radio wave. Al Jolson comes to mind- he always comes to mind because that’s about the extent of my musical knowledge of that era.
Alone with the room, sounds and buttered toast, I am flashing on a scene from The Shining, where Jack Nicholson is talking to the ghostly bartender in the Overlook Hotel.
Creepy. I am so out of here.
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