june-2010

BOOK CREDIT THE WORST HOTEL IN THE WORLD BY KESSELSKRAMER
literary hotel; the go-to bolthole for famous authors
when they come here on their book tours.
Thousands of big names have stayed here, from
legendary American chronicler Don DeLillo to
domestic goddess Nigella Lawson. Amsterdam’s
major bookstores (on the Spui) are a minute’s walk
away, and the hotel is decked out with exquisite
antiques and a collection of avant-garde art from
the region’s Cobra movement, making it the ideal
place for scribes to fi nd inspiration. I ask sales and
marketing manager Eelco Douman, who’s worked
here for more than a decade, whether he’s had to
deal with any Pulitzer-proportioned egos, but the
answer is disappointing: “Writers are generally quite
easy-going; they’re not pop stars. Sometimes they
ask for a newspaper.” A fatwa-era Salman Rushdie
This page: the Hans Brinker’s
promises of poor facilities aren’t
worth the paper they’re written on
AMSTERDAM HOTELS
was, he concedes, “a bit of a headache, because of all
the security. But he came back just a few years ago,
and it was much nicer for everyone.”
An avid reader, Eelco ensures that each author
donates a signed copy of whichever book they’re
promoting to the hotel’s ever-expanding library:
“We’ve got fi rst editions of everything from Alex
Garland’s The Beach to Martin Amis’s Money,” he
beams, showing me his favourite dedications. “But
sometimes I’m disappointed by the clichés they
write on the covers, given they’re meant to be
wordsmiths.” I fl ip open a copy of Donna Tartt’s
The Secret History – into which the American author
has doodled a windmill and a tulip – and I can see
exactly what he means.
My next stop is, at its own insistence, the worst
hotel in the world. A poster in the spartan lobby of
the Hans Brinker Budget Hotel (00 31 20 62 20
687, www.hans-brinker.com) boasts that the
enormous hostel is “proud to be dirty and carry
a wide variety of bacteria”. Stickers adjacent to the
check-in desk warn me to expect hostile service
and poor facilities. So I’m surprised when manager
Bert Hakkert strides over at the arranged time,
smiles broadly and extends a welcoming hand.
Bert takes me on a tour of the sprawling,
campus-like building, and – guess what? – it’s
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