The hotels that I’ve stayed in over the past month have been, to borrow from Forrest Gump, like a box of chocolates: you never know what you’re going to get. The hotels have been booked blind and one usually lands up at an unearthly — and certainly unsocial — hour for a few hours’ R&R before the next morning’s train journey. The rooms have been a mixed bag: the homely Chez Kutzenheimer in Wernau (preserves from their own kitchen); the Soviet-era Ramada Treff Halle; the Bates-ian Adler in Frankfurt (“Ah! We have another new one today”, one night clerk said to the other as I was checking in, and I couldn’t use the shower after that!); the minimalist, IKEA-inspired NH in Erlangen. The better ones are in the small towns and villages away from the match venues; they are (relatively) cheaper, certainly less noisy and usually worth the extra hour or two of commute.

And they throw up gems like the one I’m staying in now; an hour out of Dortmund, in a village called Neheim serviced by a two-carriage train every hour. The hotel is several miles out of the village, on the edge of a forest; none of this was noticeable at night when I came in but this morning the view from the window was green as far as the eye could see. My room, on the ground floor, has a door that opens out onto the lawn, which in turn leads to the forest. Breakfast was taken al fresco, and it’s no coincidence that the fresh forest smell adds to the appetite. It all took me light years away from the stresses of the past few weeks, back to childhood holidays in Kalimpong, and I almost considered giving up the semi-final for a day in the wild.

... contd.