I had a crazy and terrifying dream. It started off in a science fiction convention and I was in the ninth floor of a hotel. I got into a lift with a tall guy. Presently there also came a boy and an old man in a wheelchair. So we are all in this lift. It's a yellow lift. Suddenly the lift starts shaking insanely. "It's just an earthquake," says the old man, "we have them all the time." But the lift suddenly becomes a bus and suddenly we are miles from the hotel,which is called the SVP or SWK hotel, something like that.
And now it's a tram, and the tall man and I decide to get off because the tram is moving further and further away from the hotel. The road (and the tram track) is a huge oval. We can see our hotel behind us and around the other side of the oval. We start walking and presently we come to a sort of coffee shop, but it's also some kind of vehicle, even, perhaps, a riverboat because there's suddenly a canal as well. And a fat woman in a red dress with a beauty spot greets us and serves us, and she tells us that the elevators in that hotel do this all the time.
"You can catch the bus back," she says, implying perhaps that it will turn back into a lift at the appropriate time. "Either the way you came, or the opposite way - you can wait for the bus over on that corner."
"Not me," I say. "I am tired and want a taxi." So I take out the phone and all one. I speak to the taxi in Dutch, saying "Ik zou graag 'n taxi hebben," except I forget what the word "hebben" is in Dutch and actually I say "haven". So the taxi answers me in English, presumably because I screwed up speaking Dutch (and I didnt even know we were in Holland until that moment.)
"Bitch!" The taxi says. "I can't take it any more!"
"What?"
"Oh, sorry. I wasn't talking to you, but to myself. Late at night, things really get to me." (It is morning.) I tell the taxi the address. He says he'll come, but tells me where I am is near the Bad-Hotel.
I know this hotel exists - I've been there before - but I think it's in Germany or Switzerland. I look around for the hotel and I see the sign, but it's actually spelled "Buit-Hotel." The taxi driver says, "That is a very dangerous place. The young hookers take their johns there, and they come out attached to life support machines."
I shudder as the taxi turns up. Well, it's not a taxi at all but a bicycle, and attached to it is a long sofa with two backs and pale blue or gray plastic upholstery. Because it has two backs, you can't sit in the sofa, it's more like a coffin. My tall friend decides to sit in it, but I see that taxi driver has brought a friend. This taxi has a more normal seat latched on to it. I climb on.
"You know," says the taxi driver, "the SVP used to have another name..."
I wake up.