Musings on a Bed & Breakfast

How awkward to be staying in a stranger’s house. When booking a Bed & Breakfast, one keeps an eye open for coziness, cleanliness, positive breakfast reviews, and a benevolent portrait of the preferably harmlessly quirky hosts.  But what you don’t think about as you blithely click to sort your B&B search results by price, popularity, and breakfast rating, are the consequences of your actually being a guest in a stranger’s house.

Whenever you visit someone’s house, the unspoken assumption in polite society is that you will more or less abide by the rules of the house, even if they are not exactly your own.  But how can the hosts know that you will be polite, especially when they are often mom-and-pop businesses that do not have resources for online payment processing, let alone background checks?  And how do you, the strange guest, know that the rules of the house will be acceptable to your norms?  There is a big risk involved in this entire transaction that far outweighs the potential cozy cleanly warm breakfast.

And so it came to pass that Nina and I arrived on the doorstep of La Maison Bourlamaque, the Bed & Breakfast we had reserved based upon it’s #14 out of 52 rankings on TripAdvisor.com, the fact that it had a room available for the days surrounding the new year, the rave reviews of its multi-course breakfasts, and not least of all the fact that the proprietor had a Japanese wife.

From the outside, the house was a nicely built believably historic-looking place with no discernible lights on inside.  I rang the doorbell, and after a few moments – just a few more seconds than was comfortable with, to tell you the truth – Stefan, a pale bald heavyset man in his socks and mid-to-late 30s opened the door with a tee-shirt on.  He looked different than I had expected.

Without much fanfare, we were instructed to remove our shoes.  And without making any effort to help with our luggage, he then showed us to our room.  I hauled both suitcases up the stairs, while Nina carried our smaller bags.  Despite having not had a chance to look around yet, the house felt like someone’s house. The room was big, cozy, and clean, which made Nina happy.  The decorations were austere yet tasteful.  After a bit of prodding, Stefan matter-of-factly gave us the minimum amount of information necessary for our comfort: the location of the bathroom (shared with another room) and the wifi passord.  Once Stefan returned to the dimness downstairs, Nina gushed with happiness.  She slammed doors, threw towels around, and claimed her psychological space as an inhabitant of the house.  As all men know, vacations are about making your girls happy, so I was happy too.  It was a cozy, clean room, and breakfast was only a king bed sized night away.  We did a quick test of the bed, left our scents in the toilet, inspected the closets, confirmed that the wifi signal had sufficient power, and finding everything to our satisfaction, we decided to head out for dinner.

Fortunately, Stefan was sitting with his 15″ PowerBook on the couch in the living room, near the door.  Upon questioning, he indicated that there were several restaurants on avenue Cartier, the next street over.  I brought out a map, which he summarily turned upside down, saying that it was better that way, and following some of his rapid pointing, I began to trace what he suggested be our main route to the old city.  While I was still trying to understand how the map could be better understood upside-down, I absentmindedly punched a hole through it with the pen, jabbing it onto his clean and cozy wall.  Afraid to peer behind the map to see the damage, I continued to converse, eliciting the vaguest possible responses, about places Stefan recommended we go. Apparently there were very few, because before I knew it, he had scribbled a single illegible word and a dot on a street near the old city, folded up the map (which I then resumed possession of), and was looking at me expectantly like the quiet kid at the town dance.  Obviously we leave now, I thought.

Avoiding the awkwardness, we re-shoed, gloved, and Chinese fur hatted, and walked over to avenue Cartier, where we had a hearty meal at Café Krieghoff.  Nina informed me that Stefan had quickly scanned the wall for pen marks as we were leaving.  We mangéd on the table d’hotes, enjoying them thoroughly, and Nina noted how many people were eating alone.  I hadn’t noticed, but she was right – there were 4 or 5 solo eaters.  This obviously must be a good sign – no tourists would eat alone, so this must be a local hangout.  We enjoyed the meal even more.  On the way out, I noticed newspaper clippings near the entrance declaring this place good for solo eaters.  Possibly a self-fulfilling prophecy, what do I know?

As a digestif, we carried on walking through the perfectly shoveled sidewalks on the recommended path all the way to the old city, jumping into the local coffee merchant, talking with the proprietor about Obama and hope in franglais (he seemed excited to talk to Americans).  I curtailed my cynicism in face of his aberrant enthusiasm, and we bought the obligatory beans for Nina’s mom, who is said to love coffee, and carried on trotting, ultimately turning back at the old city gates to return to our B&B for the night.

Re-entering the room, Nina found it too cold for her liking.  Suffering gladly, as is the way of her peoples, she stoically stomped downstairs.  I, being hesitant to begin a confrontation with the man over the insulation of his castle, and fearing Nina’s tendency for directness, had assented to her descent on the condition that she please be nice to him for at least the first day.  She returned triumphantly with the story of her defeat.  Not only had he had told her that, despite her being cold, the house was, in fact, already warm, but that she had asked for tea, and he had said that they do not make the guests tea, but tonight he would do it for her, as if he were doing her a favor.

Stefan knocked on the door a few minutes later with a steeping pot of green tea.  Nina avoided eye contact, and put on a pout.  He put down the tea and cups and gently restated his position that the house was warm.  In a self-contradictory turn, he then began to explain that the house was old, and that the heating was centralized, thereby explaining somehow the lack of heat in the room.  Turning the heat up may make one room warm, he said, while another would be a little colder.  I failed to see the logic in this defense, but I sympathized with his plight.  All he had to do was turn the heat up, and even the colder rooms would get warmer, I thought.

He then asked me if I were cold.  At that moment, I was caught red-handed in a tee shirt, and since I generally enjoy cold temperatures and could not possibly have made the case that I was cold, I responded with the diplomatic truth that I was not cold, but that it was not so hot in the room.  Stefan insisted that he was not trying to be cheap by not turning up the heat, and that it was only because the heat was uneven throughout the house.  He repeated this several times.  Nevertheless, it seemed to us that there were no alternate explanations for his resistance to turning up the heat.

Regardless of the temperature of the room, when a guest is cold, you turn up the heat, right? By my reckoning, we were paying the Maison Bourlamaque enough to justify the expectation that a few simple requests would be satisfied.  Stefan should think of himself as our hired hand, should he not?

Stefan did eventually turn up the heat, making this reduntantly known to me the next morning.  And the combination of heat and no-doubt Japanese green tea made us warm and cozy, feeling clean and looking forward to breakfast.  But isn’t it the charm of a Bed & Breakfast that you are obligated, as a house guest, to suffer kindly the failings of the head of the household?  Shouldn’t Stefan have resisted?  Otherwise, wouldn’t we really have done better to stay in a hotel?