In the wake of my Trondheim dream reported above, another nightmare kept me up this weekend:
I'm checking into a large hotel and the desk person is giving me the spiel about the property and hands me my key, which has a sparkly keychain/bangle marked 'a11' -- not my style and I wonder if being on the ground floor will be noisy, but whatevs --
I take a bit of sleuthing to follow the signage to find the room, and the ground level is occupied with a market hall and department-store style shopping -- and when I get to the right address it is a changing room or fitting room for a clothing shop, so I'm perplexed: there's a raised security desk close by, one of those counters that looks over the rest of the display/sales floor, not the kind of thing you see often anymore, at least here in the USA, and the security guy can see I'm confused even before I open my mouth --
"What?" I explain that I'm supposed to be in a11 but a bedroom, not a changing room, and I show him the key --
he takes the key, raises his eyebrow at me, and turns the bangle/tag around and says "Sir, this is for Turquoise 110" -- and before I can really take in that I was looking at the tag upside down he officiously gives me directions like "at the end of the hallway exit the large double doors, turn left, and you will see the large Turquoise building/wing. Enter and go up one floor."
I feel foolish and defensive -- hey, why Aqua and Turquoise (A and T) when those colors are so close to the same? How was I supposed to know the beads on the tag were turquoise ? Now that I look at it again I can see that '110' is more plausible than 'a11' but why did they expect me to know that the buildings were organized by color and the keys match the color?
Anyway, the security guy is looking at me hefting my backpack and he seems to be doubting that I could be that stupid - maybe I'm up to something. Which just makes me feel more defensive.