It was nice of him to have prepared us for the rat hole which was the Grand Hotel Parc. This shabby structure, built around three sides of a narrow courtyard, had an air of vanished refinement about it, but it could hardly have rated a star in Baedeker. Yet it must have had a certain cachet fifty years ago, for in the entrance hallway hung a white marble plaque. Its dim gold letters told us that Bismarck’s widow had spent her declining years “in peaceful happiness beneath this hospitable roof.”
Our room was on the fourth floor. The stairs, reminiscent of a lighthouse, might have been designed for a mountain goat. We thought we had struck the ultimate in drabness at the Rue Berthier, but this was worse. The room itself was worthy of its approach. When I opened the big wardrobe I half expected a body to fall out. Two sofas masquerading as beds occupied corners by the window. The window gave onto the dingy courtyard. We silently made up our beds with Army blankets and sprinkled them lavishly with DDT powder.
“Do you suppose there’s such a thing as a bathroom?” Craig asked.
“I’d sooner expect to find one in an igloo,” I said. “Maybe there’s a pump or a trough somewhere out in back. Why don’t you go and see?”
The Residenz at Würzburg. The palace of the Prince-Bishops was gutted by fire in March 1945. The magnificent ceiling by Tiepolo miraculously escaped serious damage.
Ruined Frankfurt. In the center, the cathedral. Only the tower and the walls of the nave remain standing.
International News Photo
