Day 62: Night (mare) in Napier

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It was exhausting but simple to drag my luggage the four or five blocks to the Criterion. My first impression was cautiously favorable. It was certainly a lovely old building, right in the Art Deco district of Napier. The lounge was decorated in that style, as were the bathrooms. And the manager was kind enough to carry my bags upstairs for me.

My bed was hard, but my room was rather nice, with a washbasin and a lovely small-paned window with a pretty view of the art-deco district. It looked out over a pedestrian mall, so for once automobile traffic was not a problem. I thought, hesitantly, that I might be happy here once I had settled down a bit. I went shopping; the supermarket was closer than I'd feared, too.

Things began to go downhill at supper. The Criterion did have an oven, but they kept the gas turned off except when someone was actually using it, so you had to light it (with matches) every time you wanted to use it. I could no more bend over far enough to do that than I could fly. I had noticed the problem before I went shopping, but a kind, cheerful young staffer had assured me that anyone working the desk would be glad to help me with it. So I had bought my usual steaks and chicken.

When I got ready to cook the steak, the person behind the desk was not the young staffer, but the owner. He did not seem especially glad to help me light the oven, but he agreed to do so, and did.
It was also hard to get the steak out of the oven, but a young Asian guest helped me with it, and (to my astonishment) she even washed my cooking pan afterwards. I was being very clumsy with it, being tired, and I suppose she took pity on me.

After supper, I headed straight to bed, feeling totally exhausted for some reason, and ready to sleep the clock 'round. It was about 7:30, and the din from the common room and kitchen was so loud that, even with earplugs, there was no hope of sleeping.

"Well," I told myself. "It is 7:30. It's not reasonable to expect people to be quiet at 7:30. They'll quiet down once supper is over."

They did. But just as they were quieting, around 9, the bar downstairs got going. I hadn't realized it, but the entire ground floor of the Criterion is a bar. The music wasn't too bad, but the shrieks of the drunken patrons kept me wide awake, especially with the bed's being so hard.

"I can cope with this," I told myself firmly. "It'll stop around midnight. I can read quietly till then."

Midnight came. Midnight went. If anything, the noises got louder. At 2:30 a.m. I wandered out into the common rooms, seeking reassurance that the noise wasn't so bad elsewhere in the hostel, that I'd just gotten a really bad room that I could, presumably, trade for a quiet one in the morning.

No luck. There were only three people in the common room, two watching TV and one working on his computer, and none of them spoke English well enough to understand what I was asking. Suddenly, the manager appeared, the manager who had carried my bags upstairs and helped with the oven.

I tried to ask him whether there was a quiet room I could be moved to, if not now, then tomorrow. As I began to speak to him, he began to chant, "Hot, hot, too hot. It's 35 degrees." As it certainly was not anywhere close to 35 degrees, which is 95 degrees Fahrenheit, I realized in dismay that he was drunk as a skunk.

As I spoke to him, he didn't listen to what I said at all. "Too hot, too hot. Knew you'd be too hot." (He had earlier, in his sober moments, expressed incredulity that I wanted the heater.)
"But I can't do anything about it now. Going to sleep now."

I finally said, loudly, "It's NOT too hot." And indeed it wasn't; the temperature in my room was very nice, though not anywhere close to 95.

"Too cold, then? I can't do anything about that either. I get off at 8 o'clock. Going to sleep now."

"I'm not too cold!" I said. "It's the noise from the bar! I haven't been able to sleep a wink. I need to know...."

He interrupted me, chanting, "Sleeping, sleeping. Ever'body sleeping. Going to sleep now."

"I'm not!" I said. "I can't. The bar's too loud. I need to know whether I can change rooms...."

"No!" he said, and walked off, indeed almost ran, down the hall.

I had been going to say, "... tomorrow," but there was obviously no point in trying to explain that now. I went back to my room, talked miserably to Jim for a while, and then waited for the noise to stop. Perhaps the bar would close at 3.

It didn't. The last drunken yell went up from the streets outside at 5:13. Right after that, a noisy street-sweeping machine came roaring along. By the time it was gone, it was 6 a.m..

I got up, or rather got out of bed, showered, dressed, and went to breakfast. At breakfast, I repeated my question to the first two people I saw, asking whether the rooms on the other side of the hostel were any quieter.

The manager, looking very hung over, came up behind me as I was speaking. "You ought to get out of here," he said, "check out this morning. You're never satisfied. First you said it was too cold in your room. Then you said it was too hot. Then you complained about the noise. You won't be happy here. Get out."

I told him I would if I could find alternative accommodation, and I checked to see if the YHA had rented their single. They hadn't, so I rebooked it for four nights. Then, as I had originally planned to do, I went to church, telling the manager that I'd be back to check out by check-out time.

The service, at St. John, Napier's cathedral, was very Rite II, with that strange Affirmation in place of the Creed, but the minister preached a sensible sermon about the Presentation of Christ in the Temple. I was distraught enough to ask her to pray with me about my lodging situation after the service. She did. As I left the church, I stopped to sign the visitors' book, and one of the regular parishioners stopped to welcome me.

I was still agitated, so much so that I asked her to pray for me too, and briefly explained the situation. "I already asked the minister," I explained, "but three is better."

"I will be your third," she assured me. She double-checked to make sure I had really gotten a bed at the YHA and, therefore, had a place to sleep. I said I did.

Our prayers were heard. When I got to the YHA, I was greeted by a cheerful, sympathetic staffer who lent me the staff heater at once, a nice large oil-heater. (So they did have a space heater, all the time, just like Wellington.) I was squeezed into a postage-stamp-sized room, but it was pleasant and seemed likely to be quiet. And best of all they had let me check in immediately, long before the proper check-in time of 2 p.m..

The hostel reminded me of Zork: a maze of twisty tiny passages, all alike. It was a converted house, or rather a converted mansion, and rooms and bathrooms had been tucked into every spare corner.

Unfortunately, the bed in Room 21 was so hard that it made the Criterion's bed look soft. I tried to sleep on it, and since I'd been up since before 6 a.m. on the 29th, I should have been able to, but I just couldn't. In the early afternoon I asked another staffer whether I could take some cushions from the TV lounge. She asked whether bed pillows would be better, and I explained the problem lay with the mattress. She moved me into 20, next door, which she said had a better bed.

It did, but after another three hours or so it became apparent that it wasn't better enough. I went to her and asked her whether there were any double rooms with softer beds.

There were two, Room 22 with a double bed, and Room 14 with a twin, but only 14 was still available that night. Room 22 would be available tomorrow night.

I dithered, especially after she told me that Room 22 had a softer mattress. But Room 14 had Internet connectivity in the room, which was also important, and it had no traffic noise at all since its window opened out onto the smokers' courtyard in the center of the building.

The clerk obviously thought that Room 22 would be the better choice. I picked 14, though. So far, I'm not sorry. I have the twins pushed together to make a king bed (with a major dip in the middle). And they are both soft enough to sleep on, though they still make a rather hard bed. At home I have a waterbed, so all conventional beds feel hard to me.

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Photos

Napier's cathedral
The Lady Chapel, where early service was held.

Carillon
It plays every half-hour from 11:30 to 2.