Hotels

Most of the cities where we have congre- gations are large enough to have really nice hotels, a wonderful surprise considering that I came here expecting to suffer as we traveled. In the capital cities, we stay at the Reval Hotels - first class all the way. Some of the smaller cities have more quaint lodging, bordering on the quirky. In Tartu, we stay at the Pallas Hotel - pronounced Palace - whose name outreaches its reality a bit. Each of the rooms has a theme. Russ and I seem to constantly be assigned what I like to call The Big Cat room, so named for the mural on the wall opposite the beds. We discovered that it's their handicap room - I'm hoping that our constantly being given this room is a reflection of record keeping rather than our physical appearance. It's clean, but very bare bones - 2 slightly caved in single beds, and a thin carpet that valiantly attempts to hide the rises and dips in the cement floor beneath. It's a little unnerving to go to sleep under the watchful eye of the mural's 2 reclining felines. I always feel a little as if I'm being assessed as dinner. On one visit, they assigned us to a more sophisticated room. We unlocked the door and found ourself face to face with a mural depicting naked people cavorting about on the walls. We went back to the desk and asked the clerk if there were a different room available. She replied, with genuine surprise apparent in her voice, "You don't like dancers?" Bring on the tigers. . .