Guests often mention the silence. The peace. The enchanting song of the birds, who often sing to us for most of the night. Unfortunately, that same calm is also regularly (and brutally) being disturbed. Because it’s an old house. With many charms. Such as the cart track, which still runs through the middle of the large hall. The millstones that, because of their weight, found their final resting place under the stairs to the upstairs terrace. And the mural that, after some scraping and repair work, can shine once again on the wall of the dining room. The wide, high doors, on the other hand, are less charming. Don’t get me wrong: they are beautiful. But when the guests try to close them, often in vain and with a lot of violence and noise, I tend to be a little less charmed by it.
Especially because a large part of the tour of our house now consists of giving various instructions regarding opening or closing certain doors. Not only the doors of rooms one and five, which are on the ground floor and are still original, require explanation, but also both the front and back doors. In the worst case, this means that four different people can be fighting with a door at the same time. Relaxing? Not really. But it also has its advantages. Because when I sit in the kitchen quietly drinking a cup of coffee in the morning – waiting for the first guests to appear for breakfast – I hear exactly when the guests are leaving their room. One and Five thanks to the rattling of the latch and the (unsuccessful) closing of the door and Two, Three and Four thanks to the turning of the lock.
But just when I was under the impression that the doors on the ground floor were our biggest problem, the guest from room Three bangs his head hard against the window of the balcony door. He looks at me in surprise and we both start laughing. “I thought the window was open,” he calls apologetically, “but it’s just way too clean,” he continues. “But not anymore,” he concludes, while rubbing his hand over the spot where his head hit the glass just a few seconds earlier. “Sorry,” he mumbles. I wave away his apology. It doesn’t matter. That’s quite an easy fix.
When he checks out the next day, pays and starts to strap his bags onto the motorcycle parked in front of the door, I quickly ask him if he left the key to the room in the room itself. Startled, he puts his hands into his pockets. “I don’t believe so,” he says. “I’ll just go upstairs and have a look,” I shout, while he starts rummaging through his bag. After a few minutes of searching, he finally finds them in his back pocket. I breathe with relief. “I currently only have one key for this room (apart from my own spare key),” I explain. “Last weekend’s guests accidentally took one home and were going to send it back in the mail. However, the package has not yet arrived,” I conclude my story. He nods understandingly. “It won’t be the last time someone will accidentally take a key with them,” he shouts, grinning. I nod. “I fear so too.”
It becomes clear that it is not only the guests who struggle with the doors every now and then, because I seem to be struggling as well. To prevent these kinds of problems in the future, I decide to order three more key rings for each room and have the keys made this week. I would rather have guests struggle with a door that is difficult to lock than not be able to lock their doors at all. Moreover, it is usually so quiet here that a few rattling, squeaking or creaking doors cannot possibly threaten the overall feeling of tranquility. Because, clearly, no old door can withstand the overwhelming serenity of Vall de Gallinera.