The 19th floor
- May 22
- 4 min read
Downward into the future
Hardly anyone knows. We didn't either when we walked through the hotel doors. We were greeted by a subdued, dignified atmosphere. It smelled like another era. We just wanted to go up to the 18th floor to take photos of the bay from the restaurant. Warnemünde from above, that was our plan. So we lined up and stood in front of one of the very narrow elevator doors, while senior citizens and families with luggage stood next to us, a group of older women chattered happily, and two men smoked cigarettes that looked like joints behind thread curtains in the smoking lounge. Other older people had taken seats in the front area. I saw two women in their 70s squeezing into the armchairs as if they belonged there and were reminiscing. I immediately thought that they had celebrated boozy parties here during the GDR era, perhaps with law enforcement officers whose side they didn't know.
The elevator never came. Finally, we let a woman with a large dog into the elevator and waited again. The dog looked as if it had half the Baltic Sea in its fur. Finally, the time had come, and we went up. On the fifth floor, a young woman joined us and got off on the tenth. We continued on. After the doors opened on the 18th floor, we entered a narrow hallway. To the right, we saw a gallery of small framed photos in a corner. In the middle of the wall was the sign "Celebrity Gallery." I recognized some musicians and politicians, others were unknown to me. All of these people had been here before. We joked and said we should hang a small framed photo of ourselves there.
Then we turned left toward the restaurant, which was open and busy. We asked the smaller lady who bustled toward us if we could have a coffee there. She replied that coffee was only available in the afternoon. I looked to the right at the breakfast buffet and hesitated for a moment. Should we have breakfast there instead? Since we'd already eaten rolls in the apartment, we decided to turn back.
Afterwards, we discovered a smoking lounge and entered to take photos through the window. There was the town: Warnemünde from above. It looked completely different than I had expected. The dunes, which had seemed wild and natural from below, now lay in cuboids behind the wide sandy beach and reminded me simultaneously of a desolate steppe landscape and, with the dark grasses under the overcast sky, of the ruins of a bombed-out city. The long, gray road that led behind the dunes to the lighthouse followed a perfectly straight path toward Warnemünde's landmark. All the stately buildings, the Art Nouveau hotels, and smaller, old town villas and houses seemed to have been thrown together at random, and on this February morning, like a gray-white collection of rectangles and squares, lying wearily and silently next to the now equally silent lighthouse, as if waiting for summer to make them and this town bloom.
If the trees were green, the sky blue, and the dunes bright, I thought, then it must look completely different from up here, much more vibrant and inviting. But as it was, Warnemünde was like a mystery at the end of the world, beyond whose waterline began another narrow town, the "Hohe Düne."
A ship arrived, bringing passengers who would quickly disperse into the small streets, which were quiet at the time.
We sat down on the dark green leather bench, which was deeply engraved with buttons. Above it hung narrow cigar-shaped lamps, which I found very fitting and original for a smoking lounge. Who had already sat here? What important conversations had taken place here? World-shattering exchanges between celebrities and politicians, their heads shrouded in thick smoke... Who knows.
A rotating engine, which expelled the smoke from this room, gave us the feeling that we ourselves—like the politicians of this world once did—were now traveling with this room as if on a great steamer. Everyone's perception of time is different. Who knows if it's the ship passing by out there, or perhaps the hotel, rotating around it with the Earth's rotation? I wouldn't have been surprised if we had flown away with the smoking lounge and this hotel, while Warnemünde faded into an ever-shrinking speck on the map. Like a small star, this port town could hover just below us, and all the people down there would still think the hotel was standing still while we continued our journey.
And then it happened: the elevator doors opened again. The lights above hadn't been flashing. I paid attention. The arrows were coming from above. Everyone getting out now couldn't have gotten in from below. They must have come from the 19th floor. But there was no 19th floor, at least not on the elevator buttons. These guests were dressed differently, like in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. Astonished, we sat and continued watching. And just as someone receives an inspiration, I received this one: time travelers are coming from the 19th floor of the "Hotel Neptun." This is where they arrive, where they find a place and shelter before slowly mingling with the population.
February 18, 2025
(c) Bente Amlandt 2025
Photos: franksy-zabel-photography.com
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