One of the most memorable places I ever stayed was a little guesthouse in Mek’ele, Ethiopia. It was December, 2019, just as a novel coronavirus was claiming its first victim at a fish market in Wuhan, and about a year before Mek’ele was overrun by rebel Ethiopian forces who brutally rounded up the young men of military age and executed them while gleefully filming the murders with their cell phones. Airstrikes and other violence from the civil war would decimate the city and kill hundreds more. But that would all happen, thankfully, after our visit.
Our flight to Mek’ele was particularly memorable because one of the emergency exit doors on the small prop-driven plane wouldn’t fully close. When I informed the harried flight attendant that the door was protruding into the cabin and wasn’t properly latched, she tried to close it by slamming her shoulder against it. When it didn’t budge, she went to alert the pilot. He came back to the passenger cabin to look at it. He also slammed it with his shoulder. After a few attempts he shrugged, turned to me and informed me that “it shouldn’t be a problem.” As it turned out, he was right, though my wife and I spent an uneasy 45 minute flight staring at the door waiting for it to fly open and suck us out into the cold void.
At the time of our visit, Mek’ele was a sleepy small city with no indication of the awful violence that was to come. We found a room at a local guesthouse, after which we planned to hire a local driver to take us a couple of hours into the remote northern Tigray region and the magical Gheralta Mountains. The guesthouse was called the Parrot House, and it consisted of a walled courtyard surrounded by small guestroom doors, a open-air, self-service kitchen and dining area, and a massive and lovely garden filled with exotic plants and flowers. Our room was small and cozy, the plumbing worked perfectly (a rarity in Ethiopia), and the breakfast the next morning, prepared by a pair of local teen girls, was delicious. The best part of the experience was the camaraderie of the guests. Everyone, hosts and guests alike, gathered at the same table, everyone had an Ethiopian travel tale of woe or excitement, and by the end of breakfast, everyone was making group selfies and exchanging contact info and promising to keep in touch.
That was almost three years ago, and though the Parrot House was forced to close due to the civil war and pandemic, I am still in contact with some of the friends I made there. It was a perfectly lovely experience made more memorable by the care and love of the lodge owners, who strove to create an environment where guests felt comfortable, safe and treasured. We were surrounded by beauty and friendship. Everyone helped everyone else, whether they were guest or staff. I remember when we checked out how sorry I was that we weren’t staying at this delightful place for several more days.
Fast-forward to today, July 15, 2022. My wife and I are beginning a trip to explore the former communist bloc countries of Eastern Europe. Our flight to Norway, where our multi-country expedition begins, required an overnight stay in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. We decided to overnight in a hotel by the airport, where we chose a four-star hotel by a well-known American corporate brand.
For starters, hotels in Fort Lauderdale are ridiculously expensive, at least by our budget-travel standards. We paid $163 for one night, plus almost another $100 for two mediocre meals. Contrast this with our stay in Mek’ele, which cost us $25 plus an additional $5 for the delightful breakfast. When we arrived at the Fort Lauderdale airport, I called the hotel to check on the shuttle. No answer. I called several more times, and when somebody finally picked up they informed me that the free shuttle ran every thirty minutes. We waited over an hour in the Florida heat bathed in tailpipe exhausts from the busses and cars. When I called the hotel again, I was informed that we had to make a shuttle reservation, something that the first person hadn’t mentioned. We waited another twenty minutes before the shuttle arrived.
The hotel itself was brand new, freezing cold, concrete, echoing and sterile. Truly enormous lobby windows looked out at the concrete walls of neighboring hotels. The front desk staff were unwelcoming and uncaring robots. The room was gigantic and soulless, and the floor-to-ceiling 10th-floor window looked out at a noisy construction site where another concrete hotel was being built. No guests spoke to any other guests, even at the common areas or the pool.
I won’t remember this place. It is like every other big cookie-cutter corporate hotel where I am a faceless customer, assigned a rewards number and marketed to with an endless stream of slick emails. There is no joy here whatsoever. No warmth, no caring, no memories.
Some travelers like the sameness of corporate hotels. I get it, you know exactly what to expect when you stay at a Hilton or Marriott. You can be anonymous. There are usually no surprises. It’s like eating a bowl of boxed bran flakes for breakfast. It will satisfy your hunger, but you won’t remember it by dinnertime, much less years later. It’s existing, but it isn’t living.
We’re about to get on a plane to Oslo, and in a couple of days we’ll be staying at a rural bed and breakfast on a remote, family-run goat farm at the head of a Norwegian fjord, surrounded by waterfalls cascading from the glacially-carved heights. I have no idea what to expect. We’ll probably get lost trying to find it. There will most certainly be surprises. Delights. Disappointments. Regardless, it won’t be bran flakes from a box. Chances are, we’ll remember it for the rest of our lives.
When it comes to a choice between existing and living, choose living.
