Exhausted from a long day of travel in Germany, my sister and I dropped into our bed and watched American TV voiced over into German. I believe the show playing was Lost. My brother had a bed on the other side of the room. When we turned the TV off is when the vampires came out for dinner. But not my brother, just my sister and I who were sharing a bed.
I don’t know what was wrong with the places we had chosen on that trip but we were having bad luck. You can read about the other problem in Paris here.
Bed bugs feel like a thousand pinpricks all over your body, except when you turn the light on you can’t see anything on you. They aren’t ants you can brush off or mosquitoes you can slap. They are micro-soldiers in a Trojan horse waiting for the right time to strike. You only think you’re going to fall asleep. Chomp- nope. So you flick on the light and slap at the bite area. Nothing. Light off. Chom chomp. ARGH. Slap. Light on. Rub bitten area. Light off. And repeat. I can only imagine what people looking at our window would see with our flashing lights.
On. Off. On…. off. “Are they having a party in there?”
Now I know what you’re thinking. “That’s what you get for choosing one-star hotels.” But it wasn’t one-star or a hostel or a shady dump. It was a perfectly normal, respectable hotel near Berlin.
We didn’t sleep well that night, but thankfully we’d learned that some things aren’t worth getting upset about. Bottom line: keep your sense of humor with you as your travel. Also, it’s a darn good thing I didn’t know what bed bugs look like or I might not have kept my sense of humor.
