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11th ProZ.com translation contest: "Contemporary society" » English to Slovenian » Entry #13714


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Translation #13714

We're accustomed to glamour in London SE26: Kelly Brook and Jason Statham used to live above the dentist. But when Anouska Hempel's heels hit the cracked cement of the parking space outside my flat, it's hard not to think of those Picture Post photographs of royalty visiting bombed-out families during the second world war. Her mission in my modest tract of suburbia is, however, about more than offering sympathy. Hempel—the woman who invented the boutique hotel before it bore any such proprietary name—has come to give me information for which, judging by the spreads in interiors magazines and anxious postings on online DIY forums, half the property-owners in the Western world seem desperate: how to give an ordinary home the look and the vibe of a five-star, £750-a-night hotel suite. To Hem­pelise, in this case, a modest conversion flat formed from the middle slice of a three-storey Victorian semi.

"You could do it," she says, casting an eye around my kitchen. "Anyone could do it. Absolutely no reason why not. But there has to be continuity between the rooms. A single idea must be followed through." She looks out wistfully over the fire escape. "And you'd have to buy the house next door, of course." That's a joke. I think.

...

It's worth pausing, though, to consider the oddness of this impulse. The hotel room is an amnesiac space. We would be troubled if it bore any sign of a previous occupant, particularly as many of us go to hotels in order to do things we would not do at home. We expect a hotel room to be cleaned as thoroughly as if a corpse had just been hauled from the bed. (In some cases, this will actually have happened.) The domestic interior embodies the opposite idea: it is a repository of memories. The story of its inhabitants ought to be there in the photos on the mantelpiece, the pictures on the wall, the books on the shelves. If hotel rooms were people, they would be smiling lobotomy patients or plausible psychopaths.
Navadila sva se na blišč v Londonu SE26: Kelly Brook in Jason Statham sta včasih stanovala nad zobno ordinacijo. Ko pa so pete Anouske Hempel udarjale ob razpokan cement na parkirišču pod mojim stanovanjem, je bilo skoraj nemogoče, da ne bi pomislil na fotografe revije Picture Post, ki so prikazovale bombardiranje družin med kraljevimi obiski med drugo svetovno vojno. Kakor koli njena misija v mojem skromnem predelu v predmestju pa je več kot le sočustvovanje. Hempel, ženska, ki je izumila butični hotel, preden je sploh obstajalo tovrstno zaščiteno ime, je prišla, da mi ponudi informacije, ki si jih polovica lastnikov v zahodnem svetu sodeč po razširjenosti v revijah o opremljanju notranjosti in nestrpnem objavljanju na spletnih forumih "sam svoj mojster" obupno želi: kako vdahniti običajnemu domu videz in prizvok petih zvezdic, kako ustvariti hotelski apartma za 750,00 funtov na noč. Hem¬pelinovi, v tem primeru, skromna preureditev stanovanja iz srednjih delov trinadstropnega viktorijanskega sloga.

"Tudi ti bi lahko to naredila," je rekla in s pogledom švignila po moji kuhinji. "Vsakdo bi lahko to storil. Sploh ni razloga, da ne bi. Vendar pa mora biti med sobami povezava. Sleherno idejo je treba izpeljati do konca." Zamišljeno je pogledala prek požarne poti. "In ti bi morala kupiti sosednjo hišo, seveda." To je šala. Se mi zdi.

...

Vredno je premisliti, dobro premisliti, razmisliti o nenavadnosti tega namiga. Hotelska soba je prostor z amnezijo. Znašli bi se v težavah, če bi bili prisotni znaki predhodnika, zlasti ker nas gre veliko izmed nas v hotele, da tam počnemo stvari, ki jih sicer doma ne bi počeli. Pričakujemo, da je hotelska soba tako temeljito počiščena, kot bi pravkar odnesli truplo. (V nekaterih primerih je bilo temu tudi res tako.) Domača notranjost pooseblja nasprotno idejo: gre za skladišče spominov. Zgodba o tukajšnjih stanovalcih bi morala biti na slikah nad kaminom, na slikah na steni, v knjigah na policah. Če bi bile hotelske sobe ljudje, bi bile smehljajoči lobotomijski pacienti ali plavzibilni psihopati.


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