School trip mayhem
It wasn't so much the hotel as the location. We'd gone to northern France with the school history dept to look at WWI battlefields (empty fields and graveyards, basically) and were based in a crappy town outside Paris.

The first night there were gangs of Algerian youths chasing the girls in the party and doing all sorts of nonsense to try and attract their attention at 3 in the bloody morning. We were made to swap rooms with the ladies and the next night the Algerians got bottled from the balcony and ran off.

A few minutes later, as we sat outside admiring our handywork, a fire engine drew up in the square outside and someone got out and ran away. We sat looking at it for a few minutes, sitting there quietly with it's lights swirling away, and realised it'd actually been nicked. We settled down on a park bench to see what would happen next.

An hour or so later we here sirens in the distance and assume the local plod are coming to check out the stolen appliance. Not so, for they scream round the corner in classic Black Marias and proceed to pile into the hotel next to ours and begin dragging out dozens of Prossies and men in their underwear. It was a brothel, which explained why there were Ho's on every street corner in the place, and they were raiding it in clasic Pink Panther style.

Once all the patrons from the rub-a-tug shop were safely away in the back of the vans they screamed off into the night, leaving us all cheering and laughing, while the fire engine sat there flattening its battery with its lights getting slower. Later that night a passing riotous mob of Algerians brought the police back in force, and this time they took the engine with them.

Next morning our teachers told us to pack our stuff, we were moving from our 2-star hovel to a 4-star Parisian hotel because we were "double booked". Yeah, right. It was definitely an improvement, and definitely the most educational trip I ever went on.
(The Axeman, Thu 17 Jan 2008, 23:31, Reply)