After a long night of train travel from Berlin to Cologne, followed by botched hotel reservations and an endless walk alongside a stretch of highway in search of alternate accommodations, I finally land at a budget hotel with vacancies. It’s already past two in the morning and I’m exhausted, stressed and hungry. I have a long day ahead of me the next day, and still several emails to write before I go to bed. The clerk on duty speaks German with an eastern-European accent, and as she begins to process my booking it becomes clear that she doesn’t really know what she’s doing. ‘It’s not my normal job,’ she explains, and indeed, every step in the process is executed at an impossibly slow pace. I’m sweating from so much exertion and stress, and the lobby is over-lit and sterile-feeling. Each time she frowns at the computer screen I feel my composure slipping a little more. ‘Now why won’t that work?’ she asks herself. She goes to go look something up in the office, and ten more minutes pass. I shift from one foot to the other, gazing at my passport sitting there on the other side of the desk. It’s too late to back out and look for other accommodations. She returns, enters more information into the computer, encounters another obstacle. Then, at last, when I think I can’t possibly hold out any longer, she’s finally ready to process my credit card. But no, there’s something wrong with the machine! Or, is the problem that she’s not waiting long enough for the card to go through? She repeats tasks, this time waiting longer. At last everything goes through, she hands me the magnetic key card to my room. I practically sprint to the elevator. At the door to my room I insert the card, wait for the green light to come on. Nothing happens. I repeat the process five or six times without success. Now I’m really desperate. If I go back downstairs for help I might be looking at another half-hour of frustrated labor. I try the card one last time and – miraculously – the little green light comes on.