Last night’s Armitage dream

Friday night to Saturday morning. I slept really late on Saturday morning and this was the last dream — after the alarm had gone and I had shut it off. Various things in this dream make me think it is somehow about my ex-SO and/or my relationship with Germany, so apologies to non-Germans for any German insider baseball here.

***

Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten, Hamburg

In the dream, I am Richard Armitage’s friend, and he’s staying in the Vier Jahreszeiten. I’ve never stayed in this hotel, but it’s in one of the most well-known parts of the city, I’ve walked past it several times and admired the Art Deco building, and I did eat a delicious fish dinner in the Grill there once, by invitation of a very generous mentor of my ex-SO. I’m not in the habit of frequenting places like this, otherwise, and I’m not appropriately dressed for the events that take place in the dream, and in the dream, I am aware of this.

In the late afternoon, as the sun is setting, I’m walking along the Jungfernstieg toward the hotel, where we’re going to meet for dinner. I’m talking to him on my old Siemens Handy, which I bought in 2003. He’s urging me to hurry up and get there, and I’m balking because there’s a book I need to order. I’ve just been to an antiquarian bookstore right near there and picked up a few items that I had reserved but the store didn’t have the book I was looking for: It’s a book called “Das Außen” [The Outside] by a Chinese writer, a dissident, who’s made an asylum application in Germany. Armitage is telling me he’s hungry, and I’m saying that I’m not in Germany that often anymore and I need to try to get the details on this book so I can order it in time to pick it up before I leave for the United States. By this point I’m at the lobby of the hotel, and I tell him I’m just going to sit in the Grill for a minute and try to figure out the title of the book so I can call the bookstore. He tells me to call him when I’m ready to come up.

The Grill of the Vier Jahreszeiten, Hamburg.

[I doubt the Grill of the Vier Jahreszeiten has wifi. It’s a really traditional hotel. Also, I can’t imagine guests in the Grill use their laptops there — it would be really rude.] I sit down in the Grill, order a drink, and try to figure out what the deal is with this book. The waiter notices me struggling and notices that I’m an American and he informs me rather imperiously that my problem is probably the “ß” in the title — my foreign computer doesn’t have the character. I tell him it does, but I’m confused with the new spelling rules about whether you still use “ß” to write “außen.” The waiter tells me he finished school before the new rules went into effect. [Note: you do still write “außen” with “ß” in Germany (though not in Switzerland), but this problem is one that every search engine is now constructed to address anyway.] I search my computer for a half hour and can’t find the book or figure it out.

I decide to give up and go upstairs, except that my Handy has somehow erased Armitage’s number. I go to the reception desk of the hotel and ask them to call his room for me. They insist that no Richard Armitage is staying at the hotel. I tell them I’m his friend, and that I have a secret code. I ruffle through my bag to find it, except I can’t. They won’t help me get in touch with him and then they suggest, politely, that it’s time for me to go. I get outside, and night has fallen over the Jungfernstieg.

End of dream.

~ by Servetus on December 10, 2011.