All the light switches in the hallways were timed to switch off after ten or fifteen seconds, presumably as an economy measure. This wasn't so bad if your room was next to the elevator, but if it was very far down the hall, and hotel hallways in Paris tend to wander around like an old man with Alzheimer's, you would generally proceed the last furlong in total blackness, feeling your way along the walls with flattened palms, and invariably colliding scrotally with the corner of a nineteen-century oak table put there, evidently, for that purpose. Occasionally your groping fingers would alight on something soft and hairy, which you would recognize after a moment as another person, and if he spoke English you could exchange tips.
You soon learned to have your key out and to sprint like billy-o for your room. But the trouble was that when eventually you re-emerged it was to total blackness once more and to a complete - mark this - intentional absence of light switches, and there was nothing you could do but to stumble straight-armed through the darkness, like Boris Karloff in The Mummy, and hope that you weren't about to blunder into a stairwell. From this I learned one very important lesson: the French do not like us.
Bill Bryson, Neither here not there
E pronto! Só para dar um gostinho, pode ser que alguem se renda ao génio de Bill Bryson... Todo o livro é de chorar a rir (não recomendo leitura em transportes publicos... demasiado humoristico para abafar gargalhadas (acho que a Sara ainda se engasgava outra vez, seria um sarilho... enfim))... E sim, eu tenho noção que já li este livro há uns mesitos... mas digam lá que não vale a pena??