The Virtue of Redeeming Vice
DEC. 26, 2014 Roger Cohen I’ve resisted writing about Berlin’s Hotel Savoy because I don’t want to ruin it, but I figure that if it’s resisted modernizing conformity this long it can probably withstand anything. Let me just say how wonderful it is to walk into the fug of cigar smoke in the hotel lobby. Proust’s madeleine has nothing on that time-canceling waft of tobacco. Out of the mists of time, emerging through the inhaled smoke, looms another age of laissez-faire before anyone ever dreamed of saying “Stay safe” — most awful of salutations — and anyone discovered special dietary requirements; a time when kids roamed free and did not even know what a helmet was. The Savoy is not a great hotel, but it’s a pleasurable place to be because it has not succumbed to the scented air, the technological ostentation and the simpering obsequiousness by which luxury accommodation seems to be measured these days. It has taps and regular light switches rather than electronic command...