I'm not the type to trash a hotel room. If anything, I spend far too much vacation time trying to guess which the housekeeping staff prefers: a guest who strips her sheets and leaves them in a tidy pile or the guest who makes her own bed as a sign of solidarity.
We've only stayed in one hotel since we've been gone. The others have all been family-owned-and-operated apartments, usually situated in or quite close to an extended family compound. I suppose anonymity can be a plus if you're a business traveler or a sex tourist eager to pass the evening in the company of some attractive young locals, but the personal touch counts for a lot when you've got the kids in tow.
The family who hosted us in Mostar couldn't have been friendlier or more helpful. "My mother wants to know, do you drink coffee in the morning?" asked the daughter, a delightful University of Sarajevo student who'd spent a semester in the States.
"You bet," we told them and they laughed happily because what could be more sociable, more quintessentially Bosnian than sitting around drinking coffee?
"My mother say, 'Your daughter is so beautiful.' And the boy, he is very smart. I can tell." Obviously we'd come to the right place. Everybody was beaming like we were going to be their best guests ever. In fact, we were their first guests ever. Meena, the college student, was thrilled, because, according to her, very few tourists actually spend the night in Mostar. The majority blow out of town on their tour buses after bargaining with the coppersmiths, touring a couple of mosques, and taking several dozen shots of the gorgeous Ottoman bridge, the one that was blown up in 1994, and has since been rebuilt according to traditional methods. "I think it is very good you take your time, so they can see," Meena said, nodding at Inky and Milo. Goodness, me, what an accomplished and flattering young lady! I could tell that it was only a matter of time before she'd be letting an adoring Inky administer some outlandish hairdo.
"Is there a place where I can park the car?" Greg asked.
"Yes, here is okay, except maybe I think the police might tow you."
"Oh. Uh . . ."
Meena and her mother conferred. "Okay, my mother say, maybe I will go with you to find a place where your car can be safe." What a wonderful feeling to know that your hostess trusts you enough to let her virtuous, young, Muslim daughter get into a car with a strange man whose money she hasn't even accepted yet!
Not only that, Greg reported that after driving around for a while, Meena decided it would be best to park the car in her family's yard, so her folks could keep an eye on it at all times.
"Wow. What was her house like?"
"There were these ancient grandparents sitting there on the couch, looking at me suspiciously, like, "What in the hell is this?"
I showed him the goodies Meena's mother had laid on me after a quick visit to the supermarket across the way. Instant coffee, Turkish coffee, two cartons of milk, a jar of saccharine tablets and a giant box of sugar cubes . . . "These guys are really going out of their way to make everything nice for us," I said.
"Well, we're their first guests," he reminded me.
"Yeah, but look how thick their towels are, and how pretty the bedspreads and sheets and everything are. It's obvious that they care."
Mostar was so pleasant, we ended up spending an extra night, in order not to feel rushed as we milled about the old town's streets, eating ice cream and contemplating the bridge. It would have been an entirely restful experience if one of our party hadn't had a little, um, accident around dawn of the morning we planned to depart.
Why? Why, Lord, why? Why, after all this time? Why here, instead of the horrible Hotel Tabor, where all manner of bodily fluids are no doubt regularly deposited upon the clingy, polyester spreads and the desk clerk when we checked out was not the same as when we checked in.
"What do we do?" I asked Greg.
"What can be done?" he asked, in a fatalistic tone.
"I don't know! I soaped up the sheet in the sink and then hung it in the window. It's pretty early. Maybe it'll dry."
"What about the comforter?"
"I don't think it took a hit, but unfortunately, there was no protective thingie on the mattress pad."
"Oh no."
"I sponged off the mattress pretty good, I think, but I don't know. There might be lingering effects. And it's brand new. And they've been so nice."
"We have to tell them."
"Yeah, except, how? Meena went back to Sarajevo last night."
Never have I so wished to be staying in a fleabag hotel with an ass-y manager trying to sneak some sort of erroneous phone charges onto the bill. Or for the Dry Bed Fairy to magically appear and make things all better. I think we both knew what The Ethicist would say.
"Let's have breakfast and see how it goes." The children both ate heartily, but the sight of all those sugar cubes filled me with such remorse, I lost all semblance of appetite. I felt like I was waiting for the chaplain, and then the warden. I checked the sheet. It was nearly dry. No one had slept on it before us, the honored, inaugural guests.
"Do the right thing?" I asked.
"It is the only way," Greg agreed, understanding that he, not I, would be the one to carry out this righteous errand.
"Offer some money, you know, for their trouble."
"I'm sure they won't take it."
In the end, they did take it, and I guess it's a sign of increasing maturity that I was relieved. "How did they react?" I grilled Greg, as we were loading our luggage into the newly liberated car. "And how on earth did you make them understand? Did you take my suggestion to draw a toilet, and then a bed?"
"No, I just spoke really slowly and it took awhile, but then the mother seemed to get what was going on and spoke with the father, who got this very grave expression on his face."
"Oh, god."
"Well, they're parents, too. They understand that these things happen." I suppose, though it's difficult to imagine anyone as self-possessed and together as Meena ever wetting a bed. Maybe she had a brother.
"Do you think they're talking about how awful we are?" I fretted, as we drove out past the former front lines, where abandoned houses look as if they'd been sprayed with machine gun fire as recently as yesterday.
Usually, Greg, irritated, would ask me why I cared. "Honestly? I think they wish it hadn't happened, that it's not a good thing that it happened, but they're at peace with the fact that it did. It's life, and in life, shit happens."
And, to look on the bright side, it was only pee, a much-less-big big deal.