Sunday, February 14th, 2016
We were planning on going out for breakfast, but we woke up to find ourselves locked in our room. No joke. Trevor tried to pry open the door with no success. The knob would turn, but we could see that the internal locking mechanism snapped off inside. We were fucked.
Since we had plans to switch hotels anyway, we killed some time showering and packing up our belongings. I looked out the window to see if there was any safe way to climb down, or if there was anyone within yelling distance that could help us. Trevor got in touch with his mother through FaceTime and asked if she could contact the front desk We had no phones of our own, just iPods which worked only some of the time with the weak WiFi connection. She didn’t have any luck getting through.
When we heard movement in the hallway, we decided to take turns banging on the door while yelling for help. This was getting awkward. A couple hours passed until we got a response from a German man who was staying on the same floor as us. We explained the situation to him through the door frame, and he replied, irritated, “Stop this noise. I’ll go get the manager.” I don’t think he understood that we were legitimately locked inside and not just a pair of dumbasses who didn’t know how doors worked.
After a while of waiting, the manager showed up on the other side of the door. Just as the German guy speculated, he thought we simply locked our door and didn’t know how to unlock it. I explained that the lock snapped off and that we were trapped. He tried opening the door through the handle and even tried kicking it in until he finally understood what we had been trying to explain to him all along. He was going to need some tools.
When he returned, he asked us to step away from the doorway. We did, and he beat the doorknob out of the door, firefighter style. He apologized, and offered us a discount even though we weren’t blaming him for the incident. We were just happy to be free!
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