gonna be some sweet sounds

A memory:

Struggling through the second of three night shifts.

Coming to work near midnight, I'm tired. The night darkens while I catch up on everything that has happened since this morning (was I really here this morning too, wearily updating the morning shift girl before heading home to sleep?). I also make sure to fetch the biggest knife in the kitchen and hide it within arm's reach. Although the skies outside stay bright, the shadows in the deserted restaurant are deep and I turn up MTV to drown out all the little noises that make me nervous (Rihanna with "Umbrella" is a constant this summer).

While I am busy counting tills and doing the night audit, I am alert and kind of enjoying the quiet. A late customer checks in. A bit later, one of the regulars staying in the hotel wanders in and asks for a sandwich, which he makes with his own two hands in the kitchen while we chat about weekend plans.

Within an hour or two, the sun rises again and I can hear the birds singing madly outside. Two more customers arrive, these two dodgy-looking and without a reservation. I hesitate, but decide to give them a room after making sure they pay in advance.

In the middle of the night I venture out on one of the required "security rounds", meaning a nervous walk along the long, deserted corridors and through a part of the overgrown, wild garden where anything and everything might be lurking. Fortunately, nothing attacks a young receptionist this night either - in fact, the only creature awake is a frog sitting on the front steps.

For a couple of hours there is nothing to do except drink more coffee and plant myself at the reception computer to get some translation work done - might as well earn two wages at the same time, plus night differential. Around 5 a.m. the hotel is quiet and I struggle to muster some energy as I head to the kitchen to start the endless breakfast preparations - including the evil porridge that always sticks to the pot.

When the "evening" papers are delivered at 7 a.m. it's finally time to go home.

the revenge of the hotel receptionist

Someone did upset me. As I still do the odd shift at Heartburn Hotel, I had the bad luck of running into one of the truly despicable people that disgrace this world.

Arrogance, is it not the worst feature in a human being, be it conscious or subconscious? This particular man made ridiculous claims regarding the price of his room (yes, money is almost always the root of evil). We might have been able to reach a compromise were it not for the fact that he clearly thought I was so far beneath him that he could not react in any other way to my suggestions than laugh condescendingly. Good for him we were speaking on the phone; had he been standing before me, he would have had to try that laugh through my surprisingly strong hands squeezing the nasty chuckle out of his throat.

After years in the hotel business, I have noted that hotel guests in general are pleasant enough people. Better hotels tend to attract more unpleasant customers, for some reason. So I assumed I was more or less safe from these, working at Heartburn Hotel. But there is always the exception to the rule. This particular customer did not even have the excuse of being rich and snobbish... not that that is much of an excuse.

Customers everywhere have the right to complain, of course. But a complaint should, first of all, not be taken out of the air on some poorly founded reason. Secondly, there is a nice way and a nasty way of complaining. The nice way usually accomplishes more.

Here's advice to all arrogant hotel guests trying to get freebies by making ridiculous complaints: the hotel might bend to your will, in accordance with the principles of good customer relations. But hotel staff will not always, in spite of our smiles, take it lying down. The next time you avail yourself of our services, you might find that you have been placed on the black list. Or that, for some reason, only the smallest, darkest room is available, or that something in your food tastes funny, or that through an unfortunate accident, no laundry service is available just when you need it.

Because the Universe gets mad when you laugh at lowly receptionists.

last days of key management

The autumn sun shining brilliantly and I can't decide whether I'm tired or impatient to start the day.

Only a few more days at Heartburn Hotel and I might be missing it later but not now. I seem to spend all my workdays cleaning the kitchen and I'm sick of the smell of disinfectant and the rumble of the dishwasher. The hotel magic is evaporating.

I'm sure I will miss some of the people. The ex-football star and our philosophical discussions on the meaning of suffering. The blind Jehovah's Witness who seemed to be lost, too far from home. The mystery man wandering around in the middle of the night. Santa Claus silently staring into the fireplace. The international backpackers with their aroma of adventure, who make me want to pack my toothbrush, passport and diary and head south, east or west.

This summer may have been tough, tiresome and sometimes depressing, but I learnt. And I saw. I got to handle keys again.

the Swedish edge

I am starting to realise that I was born on the edge of the world. Not in the centre.

Here is a big country (OK, everything is relative) and its people, a fairly homogeneous crowd who look alike and think alike, watch the same TV programmes and like the same mild coffee, get drunk on Saturday nights and doubt themselves, vow to beat the Swedes at ice hockey and speak a quirky, complex Finnish language that nobody else can understand.

On the very edge of this country the Swedish-speakers, as fiercely Finnish as the rest but forever different thanks to their mother tongue, a little more sociable and outgoing, struggling for their identity, always unsure of what the other Finns really think of them, tending to turn inwards and squabble among themselves regarding the best course for ethnic survival.

The majority Finns feel annoyed by their stubborn insistence to press the Swedish language on everybody else who does not want it, but forget about them the rest of the time - or ignore them just to annoy them back. On holiday trips to the coast they feel it is kind of cute, this chatty language which permeates every aspect of local society and which is as ancient as their own but with an international atmosphere. The world seems to be stretching outwards from the Swedish-speakers' seaside towns.

The trainee in the hotel reception is experiencing this for the first time, newly arrived from her inland Finnish city. More language skills are required of her here and more travellers from all over the world smile at her across the counter. There are traditions she has only heard about and she feels as if she is half-way to Sweden. The locals, as Finnish as herself, address her in that weird language which she has struggled to learn in theory for years.

I, her workmate and shift supervisor, speak to her in a broken Finnish, read a local newspaper in Swedish and seem too sure of my place in the world considering the fact that I struggle with the language of my own country.

And I smile way, way too much.

midnight in the house of good and evil

I won't deny that I am anxious, doing the night shift all alone in the hotel. The constant noise from the TV, the music channel, my only and not very comforting company - rappers exhorting half-naked girls to shake their booty somehow don't seem to understand my loneliness and weariness.

It's not so much that I'm nervous of the dangers of the night or scared of the darkness. OK, maybe a little, but I push that fear aside while walking the endless corridors and venturing into the dark corners when necessary. Even the overgrown jungle that goes by the name of "garden" doesn't get my pulse racing much. The drunken men staggering in after a pub crawl don't worry me either, although I make silent wishes that they won't linger in the hotel bar for a beer but crawl straight to their room and into bed.

Perhaps it's only my weariness, that ancient instinct of seeking the refuge of home when darkness falls. Or the loneliness. Or the heartbreaking fact that I can't seem to make myself love this job either, as I can't love any job no matter how much I try - and the consequence, the depressing realisation that life may always consist of a vague dread of daily life. Or nightly life.

my bedmate, afternoon sun

Afternoon is the new morning. Just rolled out of bed, was going to make the computer play some pretty music while I hit the shower but here I got stuck reading the blogs of strangers and half-strangers.

Pulling three night shifts in a row and I'm almost not scared at all, alone in the gangster place all night. The shadows in the deserted restaurant deepen around 1 am but then the light gains ground again and I can hear the birds outside. Wondering at the weird people who wander around at 3 am.

This is one long day, lasting from Sunday lunchtime till Wednesday night perhaps, or whenever I manage to go to sleep in darkness again. In the evenings, groggily drinking my wake-up coffee, I feel I missed the transition of one day to another, because sleep is usually the boundary but sleeping in the daytime in a darkened flat only seems like an afternoon nap. Going to work close to midnight I remember that I was there this morning too and my brain fails to cope with this Weirdness.

the corridor between the worlds

The ugliness of it, and yet the sparkling magic in the air. Which door should I open today?

I know there is an adventure here somewhere...

living in the dark corners of cosmos

The tranquil days at Heartburn Hotel are gone.

The holidaymakers with their kids, dogs and suntans are flooding in. The workers and businessmen who have spent weeks and months in the quiet of the hotel over the winter, smoking and reading the papers and ordering their steak and beer in the evenings, grumbling pack up and leave.

Some of them stay. A few of them I never see but the computer tells me they are there somewhere, in some obscure room in a faraway derelict building. The young ex-convict, a few hardworking builders who diligently leave early in the mornings and return for an early night, a few others.

Late at night I walk through the overgrown jungle that used to be a garden on my way to lock up the sauna building for the night. A roaring fire is lit in an old fireplace at the other side, behind the trees, and an old man with snow-white hair and beard is sitting there quietly staring into the flames. It is a peaceful sight. He is there almost every night. His days he spends cleaning the hundreds of windows of the hotel, a task to which he seems to dedicate his heart.

Except for his threadbare clothes, he looks like Santa Claus. Maybe he is.

voices down the corridor

Walking down an empty corridor, an endless row of similar doors on each side. Worn and stained carpet. A faint odour of mildew. Murmuring voices behind some of the doors.

Reminds me of a dream. But this is real, this is a hotel.

Getting to know all its rooms, its nooks and crannies, is acquiring control. Knowing the good rooms, the ones to avoid, the one that smells, the one with the funny wallpaper, the one that has been converted to storage space. Deciding which one I would stay in if I had the chance. I walk down the corridor with purpose, jingling my master key.

I know what writer Paul Theroux meant when he wrote about the hotel he managed: "Shared by so many dreaming strangers, every room was vibrant with their secrets... the left-behind atoms and the residue of all the people who had ever stayed in it... Assigning people to such rooms, I believed I was able to influence their lives."

My brother, after millions of business trips, claims that hotel rooms are cold and dreary. But for me, knowing intimately how alive and vital an organism the hotel is and being in the middle of it, the rooms are a quiet and peaceful refuge. Hurrying into an empty room to look for something, I often pause to breathe. Occasionally, on quiet days, the staff sneak into one to watch TV while the boss is away. Sometimes I have been allowed to stay overnight and enjoyed the luxury of marble bathrooms with soft towels and expensive, complimentary cosmetics, or been amused by the bygone-era-atmosphere of rooms too old to be sold to paying customers.

Weary business travellers, elated families on holiday, backpackers, couples in love, people who move in groups, drifters with nowhere else to stay, people with hope in their eyes and others with despair in their entire being. All away from home, for good or for bad, and I can only imagine their feelings and experiences in these rooms.

It's true, in a hotel you really see it all. Cosmos packed into a corridor with doors leading... who knows? And I hold the master key.

the janitor is worried

I defrost and deep fry, insert commas in people's writings, send letters saying "pay us or else" and I try to remember to turn the sauna on in time.

I mix three languages and improvise to balance the till. I tell an old lady that she can't see the sea from here. If I forget to give a receipt for the beer bottle I sell, the place might lose its licence.

The janitor is worried that I will leave too many lights on when I lock up for the night but he is not worried at all that one of the gangsters will steal money from the wide-open safe in the wide-open office.

I don't understand any of this either. It's a hotel. All the explanation you need.

i desire strawberries and a chef

Hotel kitchens are sexy.

It's a place where you step into a hot smell of spice and the even hotter stare from macho chefs. A real feminist would have a fit of righteous fury over the lewd remarks that chefs are experts at delivering to any unsuspecting female straying into their male-dominant territory.

But alas, I'm too in love with men to be a successful feminist. It's a game. I'm locked in a cage with a bunch of playful and handsome tigers and I have to be strong, smart and beautiful to survive. If I win the game, a chef will prepare a gorgeous feast just for me, with strawberries for dessert and a promise of more.

A strong, smart, beautiful man who can cook for you. It's enough to make even a feminist swoon.

To my eternal disappointment, this particular hotel kitchen is empty. A surly woman functions as a part-time cook and she is no fun at all.

I still hang out in the kitchen a lot. Listening for the echoes of happier times when food was hot, flirty, dangerous, exhilarating. Waiting and hoping for a genuine chef to arrive.

last thing I remember I was running for the door

Fell through a trap-door in the universe and find myself working in a hotel again.

If that's what it is. It's a place where the janitor is the boss, the building is a former refugee camp and half the receptionists don't speak decent Finnish. Mysterious Russians are the brains behind it all. It has the run-down look of an old gangster movie about it. And a huge bird, a magpie, has built a nest just outside the reception window. I've only seen one magpie in it yet though there should be two. "One for sorrow, two for joy..."