I've been lucky with hotels/hostels/etc...
...some fantastic, most just OK, and some a little bit crappy, but nothing worth writing about. That'll be my excuse to describe the tenuously-linked state of the 'rehearsal room' my band once hired:

It was in a run-down street that was generally looked down upon even by the run-down area of my town that contained it. It was a basement room under a boarded up shop that was in an entire row of boarded up shops. It was about 10ft x 15ft, and there were 6 of us with various amps, PA, guitars etc., but luckily no drum kit on this particular occasion. It had no windows and one bare bulb hanging from the ceiling at a height that meant it slapped you in the face and burned your cheek if you tend to jump around when playing, as at least half of us did. There was one double socket with two four-in-one extension leads for power. The plaster on the walls was either bubbled, falling off or covered in black mould depending which direction you faced. The carpet was black, but you could just about tell it used to be red, and was covered in fag butts. The smell was indescribable.

We'd only booked it for 2 hours, and we didn't even make it that far through, despite the music going really well. On the way out I temporarily lost any intelligence I may usually posess and decided to go to the loo before we left - big mistake. Trying not to piss on your shoes, the walls, the sink, the carpet etc., while violently dry-heaving is no fun, and apparently too much of a task for the previous guests. From the looks of it the toilet had been used daily since the basement room was pristine, and flushed only once in that time.

You know the beige poo-froth that floats about on the top of the watertanks in a sewage works? It had a solidified, browny-green, mouldy approximation of that where the water should be (there may well have been water underneath, but I wouldn't know as the piss just kind of pooled on top of it. I guess nobody was stupid enough to use the loo recently after all, and that probably accounts for the piss-smell being stronger by the sink).

I was breathing as slowly as possible, through my t-shirt and I could still taste the smell. The memory of that bathroom still haunts me - I don't think I'll be eating tonight.

The best bit: a few years ago the area got one of these urban rejuvination winfalls - loads of cash being injected to make it the kind of place you just hurry through instead of avoid completely. That particularly delightful building was left standing while others around it were pulled down and rebuilt, and was converted into... a kebab shop. Yes, it is now possible to purchase food prepared in that very building. Niiiiiiice!
(misanthrope is so adjective he's verbing nouns!, Fri 18 Jan 2008, 15:45, Reply)