Since we are so far from home, the friendly and thoughtful actions of others matter all the more to us.
The welcoming sign at Veronika’s Radlerpension in Dömitz: “Dear guests, you are heartily welcome.”
Sometimes those acts of kindness come from people on the street, who give a moment from their busy lives to direct us. A few don’t even wait to be asked; they see us looking confused or poring over our maps and offer help. One such person was an old beggar in the London underground, who sat in the same place every day. On our first day in London, he pointed out to us where the escalators were, so that we wouldn’t have to use the stairs. Later we went back to give him a few coins. A man in Rome was very sympathetic when David dropped a €50 note through a grid into a tiny underground cellar. With the help of a long stick and some chewing gum, he managed to fish out the note, and he refused to accept anything for his time and effort. It took him at least half an hour.
Patrick and Sophie at the Trevi Fountain in Rome
The managers of hotels and pensions are naturally obliged to provide a room and breakfast, but many do much more than that. Nora at the Haus-Elbtalaue in Bleckede, for instance, had already carried our bags up the stairs to our rooms by the time we arrived. She also made phone calls for us, arranging a discount for a puppet show; when I tried to thank her in my stuttering German, she replied with a German phrase meaning, “It’s all part of the service.” Herbert, the owner of Hotel zur Elbaue in Wittenberge, offered us the use of both his laundry and his sturdy touring bikes, refusing to take one extra Euro cent. “All inclusive,” he said. The small, personal hotels are my favourites. That’s why I appreciated the Hotel-Pension Bregenz in Berlin, where the owner and manager, Christian, printed out train and plane tickets for us, advised us and made us feel utterly at home.
A napkin from breakfast in Bleckede, “where the storks come to rest”
The unexpected kindness of others has often saved us money or anxiety. For instance, the lady who served us breakfast in Warwick gave us some vouchers for Warwick Castle and let us leave our car parked at the hotel all day. We reckoned up the savings at £65. In Germany on the Elbe my bike had a flat tyre; the kindly owner of our Pension, Manfred, pumped up the tyre and gave me some numbers to call if it went flat on the way to Dömitz. Paul, a man with a sausage stand in the centre of Hitzacker, left his sausages cooking and rushed off to write down another number for me. I had those numbers in my pocket just in case my bike let me down in the middle of nowhere.
At Manfred’s Maison de la Marionette in Tiessau – photo by Barry
In our little pension in Milan, the B & B Monteverdi, the managers have also been exceedingly kind. They speak almost no English and I know only a few words of Italian. We communicate with gestures and nods and smiles. Today I decided to write them a little note in Italian. With a great deal of help from my dictionary, I explained that on Monday we are catching a plane for a 24-hour flight at 10pm. Could we stay in our rooms until noon? Could we deposit our bags until about 4? I dread to think how many errors of grammar and idiom I committed. But when we came home in the afternoon, there was a note in response, written in English:
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Hello, your room can be left whenever you want. There are no problems.
You are wonderful people.
With the best regards from the staff of B & B Monteverdi
Wasn’t that lovely?
One of the old-style trams in Milan
An hour or two later, the young lady brought us some home-baked biscuits. They were delicious.
Home-made biscuits at B & B Monteverdi, Milan
We’ve been very lucky. We must have met a thousand people in the course of our travels and only two or three have been frosty or unhelpful. Many of the others, with their simple acts of kindness, have made the trip even more memorable.
