The night was cold and damp…dreary, to say the least. It was eleven-thirty in the evening, and I’d spent three hours walking from hotel to hotel in an attempt to find a room while wheeling behind me a large Sampsonite piece of luggage with another suitcase tied to it. In my other hand I carried a heavy briefcase completely filled with files. After three miserable hours of defeat, I realized I’d come full circle. I was back where I started, at the Le Meridien Grand Hotel. It was a hard days night in Nurnberg!

When I say a hard days night, I mean a hard days night. My work day began by getting on a two-hour flight from Ohio to LaGaurdia Airport, and after a two-hour lay over, an eight-hour flight to Frankfurt, Germany. From there I took an over two hour train trip to Nurnberg. With time in airports and layovers and train and taxi trips, I’d put in fifteen hours before my day began. I do not rest or sleep well on planes, trains and taxis, but I arrived ready to participate at a local division office of an international publishing company for which I was a sales trainer at the time.

It was in early December, 1990. This was not my first time coming to the ancient and historic city of Nurnberg. As a sales trainer, my responsibility was to help develop and train sales managers and representatives for the company. Our customers were the American military, so speaking German was not one of my requirements since the representatives all spoke English. Personally, I only knew a few words; such as guten morgen (good morning), guten noben (good evening), and a few others, such as Pils bitte, danke (Beer please, and thanks). I did know a few more than these but not enough to communicate.

Before this trip, I found most people working in the hotel and restaurant industry spoke adequate enough English for me to feel comfortable. However, since the Berlin wall had fallen the year before, everything seemed to have changed in the industry. Many non English speaking East Berliners had crossed over to the West and was now working in the hotels. I don’t know if it was just a late night shift situation this fateful evening of which I speak, but of all the hotels where I attempted to obtain a room not one person at the check-in counters spoke English. I understood well what they said to me in German, though. They all finished their sentences with “nein Zimmer,” meaning, no room.

I distinctly recall to this day the desperation I felt as I leaned against the outside wall of the Meridien after the hours of searching for a place to stay that evening, wondering how I had gotten myself into such a mess. Up until this time I considered myself to be an expert traveler, but I was in a quandary, having no idea what I was to do?

Actually, I, personally, had not gotten myself into this mess, nor had anyone intentionally done so. It was simply a failure to communicate. As usual, after the sales meeting with the representatives and local managers at the end of the work day, the division manager and I went to dinner to discuss more private matters important to his operation. As the evening began to wind down, I started to ask him where I had hotel reservations. Before I could ask him, however, he said, “Where’d you find a hotel?”

“What?” I asked, perplexed. It was always understood the local managers had my itinerary set up with hotel stays. “You haven’t set up a reservation for me?”

“No. I called the home office last week and explained that with the toy conventions all over Bavaria there were no hotel rooms available. They were all booked, and they had been for weeks. I couldn’t find anything anywhere. They told me not to worry…that you were resourceful. You’d find something.”

“Glad they had confidence in me,”I muttered. No one had bothered to tell me. I glanced at my watch. It was eight o’clock in the evening. “I better get started,” I said.

“What’re you going to do?” He asked, with a voice of concern and a perplexed look on his face.

“Drop me off at the Le Meridien Grand Hotel.” I said, trying to sound confident. “The hotels in that area are expensive…more likely to be cancellations.”

No, I hadn’t gotten myself into this mess, but it didn’t matter as I leaned against the hotel wall, wind blowing stinging sleet into my face. I was still in a heck of a mess. But there was a stubbornness welling up inside me that raised my ire to a level of self chastisement. I felt determined not to let this night end the way it was predicting. In my mind, with my ego, there was no way. Who was I? I was the person who spent his lifetime turning lemons that life dealt me to a thrilling and exotic lemonade. I knew at this moment that I had to reach deep down inside myself and become very creative.

Suddenly, I had a thought. It was brilliant! It was as if a brief, clear, blinding flash flickered across my brain. “Yes!” I said, almost screaming. It was truly one of those eureka moments. I knew exactly what I was to do. I grabbed my cases and headed toward the entrance of the hotel. This hotel was where I was going to spend the night, and I knew it. It was going to be my artistic and creative talent that was going to get me a room for the evening; of this, I was certain.

The young, blonde haired, lady that I’d spoken to a few hours earlier when I tried to check in was still at the counter. She looked up at me. When she saw me, she glanced down almost sadly, shook her head, and said something ending with, “…nein zimmer.”

“Ya, ya,” I said, as I confidently wheeled my luggage past her and into the lobby. I immediately settled upon a couch and took out a pad and pencil. Before beginning to sketch, however, I glanced back at her. I knew by the concerned look upon her face that she was worried about me squatting in the lobby all night. ‘No,’ I said in my mind, ‘…not to be.’ I was going to sleep in one of their beds. I just needed to hurry before she could call someone to run me off.

And hurry I did. It took less than five minutes to scrawl a complete communication that would hopefully allow me to score a room.

I placed the first sketch on the counter, and asked, “Do you have a conference room here?” Her response surprised me. “Ya, ya…conference room,” she said, looking at the sketch. I thought I’d hit pay dirt by her reaction! She seemed to understand me perfectly. Had she said conference room?…in English?  It wasn’t until the next day that I found out one of the interpretations for conference room was Konferenzraum. The pronunciation was very similar.

Gaining confidence, I pointed to the roll-away bed with the bell boy placing the bed inside of the room.

“Ya, ya,” she said, nodding her head positively as if she understood.

Then I showed the sketch with a man (representing me) in the roll-away bed in the conference room. I hoped the z’s coming from him was an understandable universal language representing sleep. In the event she did not understand, I spoke a few words I knew: “Nacht (night)…miene (my)…zimmer (room)”.

She took the sketch and turned it sideways, upside down, and then right side up again. She looked at me, studying me, and then she looked seriously at the drawing. When she looked back up at me, I put my open right hand on my shoulder with my left hand over it and laid my head askance on top of them and shut my eyes, making a noise, pretending to snore. When I opened my eyes, I said, “Conference room. Meine…zimmer…nacht.”

“H-m-m-m,” she said, glancing back at the sketch. I think she was beginning to enjoy the charade.

I laid another sketch in front of her. It had the following words written on it: Morgen (morning); zimmer (room); gast (guest); and abreise (check out). I’d forgotten I knew so much from my travels. I felt the four words would tell the story. If not, I hoped the drawing would do the trick. I could almost see the gears turning in her mind. She seemed to be keeping up with me. I crossed my fingers hoping to die that I wasn’t wishfully thinking.

“Morgen…wach…mich,” I said, as if suddenly I’d fallen into a pool of fluent German. (Interpretation: Morning…wake…me. I learned these words on my first trip to Germany so I could get a wake up call.) After this I handed her the next sketch.

This sketch showed a picture of the bell boy wheeling my luggage toward the room from which the earlier guest checked out. “Meine zimmer…morgen.” (Interpretation: my room…morning) I said, determinedly. I was hoping she understood that the person in the checked pajamas was me following the bell boy to the room that was first checked out in the morning. But I wasn’t sure. The way she kept glancing at me and seriously staring back at the sketch made me nervous. I came to the conclusion she was trying to critique my art, trying to see if there was a resemblance to me.

I wasn’t trying to impress her with my art. Didn’t she understand that I was simply trying to communicate? These were only hen scratches. I had a serious message to portray. I was tempted to try and explain. Fortunately, however, wisdom set in and I continued my quest.

I handed her the fifth sketch, pointing to the man in the bathtub, and said, “Ich…bad…morgen.” (Interpretation: I…bathe…morning.”

“Ist Sie?” She asked, pointing at the picture and then at me. I didn’t understand her words but did her action. She wanted to know if the person in the picture was me. “Ya, ya,” I replied.

“Nein,” she said, shaking her head emphatically no. Then she did the oddest thing. She reached over and gently pinched me on the upper arm and pointed to the arms of the man in the picture. “Sie,” she said pointing at me, and then holding her arm up crooked as if flexing a muscle like a weight lifter. “Ihn,” then she pointed to the man in the picture and held her arm out limply, giggling.

I felt as if I’d just had a serious critique of my art. “Baden…Morgen,” I said, a little more somber than intended.

“Ya, ya,” she said, becoming serious. “Einen moment, bitte.” She took the sketches and put them in order with sketch #1 on top, turned and took them to a room at the back of the counter. I hoped I hadn’t upset her.

In a matter of minutes a portly gentleman came out of the room with the clerk following behind him. He was holding my sketches. “Nein,” he said, shaking his head.

My heart sank to the soles of my feet. The sales pitch of my lifetime had failed and disappeared into the quagmire of bad travel experiences the world over. I was destined to a night of hanging around the train station, pretending to be waiting for a train. I would get no sleep, and I’d been up well over twenty-seven hours by now. Before I could say anything, however, I noticed what he was doing. He was rubbing his thumb back and forth between the tip of his index and middle fingers. ‘Yes,” I thought, “the universal language.” He was talking money, like in, give me some. I still had a chance.

It didn’t take me long to realize I totally misunderstood him. He wasn’t asking for a bribe. He kept using words like aber (but) and pries (price) and zimmer (room), I realized that he didn’t know how to properly charge for the conference room. “Room price…zimmer pries,” I said, firmly.

I couldn’t understand what he said next, but it had aber, pries and zimmer in it with a lot of other words. Somehow, he felt it wasn’t right to charge a room price for an open conference room for the night. “Ya, ya, it’s alright,” I said in English. With determination, I pressed my American Express card into his hand, and said, “Zimmer pries..ya, ya.”

He shrugged, gave me a look like it was a nutty idea, and then took the card and turned toward the computer. The clerk grinned at me, winked, and reached for the telephone. In a matter of minutes a bell boy came through the lobby with a roll-away bed, another came and took my luggage, and as short of a time as it was, I slept like a log after this hard days night. Promptly, the next morning at 6:00 a.m. I was awakened by a bell boy who took me and my luggage to a comfortable room already made up fresh. After taking a hot bubbly bath, I said: “Best $432.00 American I ever spent.”

The next morning, when asked by the local manager of our company if I had trouble getting a hotel room, I replied, “No problems…no problems at all.” The manager shook his head in confusion…or was it amazement? I think, perhaps, the latter.

True story.