The nasty hotelier

We went to the nearby town of Hanko the other afternoon to do some writing in a cafe, followed by a nice dinner.

We drove there using a car that my colleague had borrowed from his girlfriend's friend and had parked out the front of a hotel, next to the hotelier's car (judging by the logo on the side).

Anyhow, after dinner, we arrived back to the car and noticed that the hotelier's car had gone but there was a dint and a scratch on the side of our car.

We went into the hotel and the receptionist said that the car belonged to his dad but he was out so we gave her our details.

When we got back onto the street, we saw the hotelier's car parked on the other side so we walked up close for a look and saw that his car door was damaged, with traces of our car's paint still on the edge of the door (obviously he banged his car door against the side of our's).

So, armed with our new piece of incontrovertible evidence, we went back into the hotel and the receptionist said her dad was on his way.

He eventually showed up.

My first impression did not bode well. The hotelier was not a nice-looking man. He was fat, with a button nose, and an awful porn star moustache. And you don't have to be fluent in Finnish to realise that the conversation between my colleague and the hotelier wasn't going well. Basically, the hotelier denied it was him who had caused the damage.

We took him outside to show him the evidence, i.e. the scratch marks and paint on the door of his car. He became verbally aggressive. He blamed us for parking too close but still denied it was him – and stormed off back into his hotel.

We went to look for the police station but unfortunately it was closed so we came back to the field station without having resolved anything. I guess it will now be left to the insurance company to chase things up. I took lots of photos.