April 19, 2015

I walked up the reception desk and told them that I had reserved a room at the hotel. The receptionist gave me my key and informed me that check-in will stop at 11PM due to their rooms reaching maximum capacity. She also told me to call the front desk in case there were any problems with the water.

I continued down a long hallway, turning ever slightly to the right with it. I thought about turning back and considered that I might have went through the wrong hallway until I saw the elevators around the corner. I walked in through the open doors and realized that I had to manually close the double-layered doors by pulling them together. To the left of the top of the door was an analog display of the floors. I was currently on floor A, and the lowest floor (2) was right below. I looked at my card and saw that I had to get to the “14 [2]” floor. I was confused by the double numbering of the floor and was even more so shocked when I realized that the elevator had no buttons. The elevator was operated purely through a knob at the left about the size of a palm. Turning it clockwise brought the lift upwards.

The elevator was extremely hard to control as I kept overshooting the floors that wanted to get to. The first time I opened the door, I peered out into an empty hall and realized from the display I wasn’t at the right floor. The second time I opened the door, I had ended up in what seemed to be a parking lot under construction. At some point I accidentally turned the knob too far counterclockwise and the elevator shot out of the shaft and turned into a mine cart. I was now holding onto the sides as the cart sped down the tracks in an outdoor garden and I felt like I was going to be swung out at any time. I turned the knob again in the upwards direction in an attempt to slow down the cart and hopefully climb back up the hill again. It was to no avail as I saw another cart catching up behind me.

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It was the 10th of April according to my watch but it seemed like people were still pulling April 1st pranks. There was a blurb on the weekly Student Body Info e-mail asking what students were looking forward to and my responses were completely different from what I had submitted earlier.