Stuffola: A Eurostyle Motel 6 Without the Luxe

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March 31, 2005

A Eurostyle Motel 6 Without the Luxe

One of the highlights of our road trip was staying in Malmö at a place our child called a freeway hotel, which is close enough. In Malmö, as in many European cities, it often feels as though a traveler can choose to stay in a hotel or choose to eat but not both. There are hostels with family rooms but those aren't always downtown and are often booked. So when hubby stumbled on a hotel that charged a piddling 330 crowns per night per room, I was thrilled. (Have you noticed that not once, in any of the recent corporate-excess scandals, has the phrase "freelance writer" appeared near the word "overpayment"?)

Formule1 was quite the experience. In Sweden it has hotels in Malmö, Stockholm and Göteborg. The global chain is part of Accor Hotels, which encourages customers to "listen to your dream," even if it involves, say, "unashamed indulgence." Formule1 caters to the lower end of Accor's clientele, people dreaming of vermin-free lodging. It was about as luxe as a minimum-security prison, minus the tennis courts, and difficult to get into because we didn't have an actual reservation (thanks, honey) and so couldn't use our credit card to get the magic 6-number code that let us into the hotel and our room. A living, breathing employee was on hand to register guests only between 5 pm and 7 pm and then made a reappearance in the morning hours to supply an institutional breakfast of rolls, margarine, jam, honey, cheese, coffee and tea, which could not be taken into our rooms but must be consumed while we sat on small hard black stools, which did not swivel, at a U-shaped orange Formica-like counter. Did I mention it felt like a prison?

All rooms are identical and sleep three (assuming rock-hard foam mattresses send you to dream land), thanks to a brutal design efficiency. There's a long bunk bed affixed on one side of the room, above the head of a double bed. On the left side of the double bed is a ladder leading up to the bunk. A clothes rod with hangers runs between the ladder and the wall. On the far side of the double bed, in the left corner, is a sink. On the right corner is a shelf, a chair, and a small wall-mounted TV. The vertical fluorescent light fixture built into the bunk support *did* swivel but was weird and annoying. The room had an automatic lock opened by punching in the right code on the number pad outside but no inside lock, which was creepy. Hmm, did I mention it felt like a prison?

Since the room was almost exactly the same size as our tiny cabin in the woods (16 square feet, maybe), we could cope. The sheet story was mysterious. Instead of having two sheets, each bed had a single, double-length sheet that was folded over. Another mystery: The double bed had one single weird, long pillow instead of two. And then there were the toilets and showers down the hall, seriously plastic modular units that screamed porta potty. A pair of green and red lights above the toilets let you know if the units were occupied. You didn't flush manually; unlocking the door triggered the flush mechanism, which the signage suggested was some kind of fabulous self-cleaning system.

Which is not to say I hated Formule1 entirely. My favorite part was the many notes and signs taped to the front door in Swedish and English. The best, in Swedish, had a drawing of a little dog with a huge camera in its face and said, "Don't pound on the door, you're being videotaped." And because it was clean and because it was cheap and because the kid thought the place was adorable, god help me I may even go back some day.

Posted by Deborah Branscum at March 31, 2005 11:25 AM

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