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The bizarre Residence Kristinelund

I was going to leave it at a few tweets, but this hotel just upgraded itself to a full blog post. Staying at Residence Kristinelund in Oslo has really been a bizarre experience from the start. When I arrived, the front door was locked, and I discovered after some looking around that there is no door bell to ring. So I tried knocking. There was no answer. After going around the house to see that there was no other door that might be the entrance, I discovered a small piece of paper with a phone number on the door. So I called it, and was told that they were very busy at that moment and that I was put in a queue. I looked around once more to see if there was anyone else trying to get in who might have called before me and caused the business. I eventually got through to someone and found out that I was supposed to have received a code for the door. I hadn’t, but now I had the means to go inside and find the reception.

It turned out that there was no one at the reception, despite the fact that it was not yet past the time when the sign said that the reception would close. Instead, there was a note on the door with my name on it saying that the key to my room was inside the room and that they hoped I would enjoy my stay. In any hotel room, the first thing I do is to look around and see where everything is. This time was no different. When I opened what I thought was the door to my bathroom, I entered a room that looked very much like the one I had come from. It turned out that room 103 and room 104 were connected, and there was no way to lock that door. However, the key to room 104 was hanging on a hook in that room, and the only other note at the reception door was for someone staying in room 106, so I decided to lock the door to room 104 from the inside and treat it as if it too was mine. I went on to look through all the drawers of that room too, and discovered that while there were DVDs and an instruction book for a DVD player in my room, but no actual player, there was a DVD player and a remote control for the TV in that room, and no DVDs. There was also a trouser press in that room, but otherwise they were very similar.

Since the door to the bathroom didn’t lead to a bathroom, the conclusion had to be that there is no bathroom connected to the room. And there isn’t. But there was a bathroom in the next corridor, so I could manage. The important word, though, being “was”. When I went to brush my teeth tonight, all the tiles on the floor and walls of that bathroom had been taken off and replaced with a thick layer of dirt.

Luckily, both the bed and the wifi are still where they are supposed to be.

Update: At 00:32, room 104 got two guests who were equally as interested in the door between the rooms as I.

Update 2: On the evening of my third day in the hotel, the corridor that used to lead to the backup bathroom I had found on the second floor was locked (not the door to the bathroom itself, but the whole corridor), so I had to find yet another bathroom that is even further away from my room.