From Denmark

Mr Scheltema had anticipated me even here. The idea behind the Casa Academica had come in the first place from Denmark. At the Hotel Egmont in Copenhagen which is actually run under the university council, one of the professors lives with his family in a bungalow within the grounds and he spends an hour or two each day at Egmont on call to students as part of his job. The university in Amsterdam might decide to have the same arrangement here. But professor or no professor, certainly the hostel would have its junior and unmarried staff members. They would live here on the same terms as everybody else as part of the intellectual community without having to become wardens or house tutors or anything functionary. The conditions were attractive enough to keep senior students and staff members where they would have left other hostels as soon as they had enough money to keep a flat. On behalf of senior students and junior staff, I agreed profoundly.

"Well then," said he, "on the seventh of November or whatever date you choose, in an instant the whole thing becomes a hotel. You have say 300 rooms (it's not economical to build less). Each of these rooms has a divan which can be unfolded as a single bed or a double bed. Your total capacity is 600 with the added advantage that each of your rooms is potentially either a single room or double room as you need it, and that each set of two rooms has been built to serve either as two separate rooms or as a suite, the divan in one room being turned into a bed and in the other kept as it is. No team of furniture-removers to stack and unstack 300 iron bed frames each year.

"The kitchens on each floor are stored with the goods of the students who won't be needing them till March. (It's an advantage of this hostel over any flat that a student has security of tenure into the next year without having to pay for the three months when he wants to be away). The shop downstairs which yesterday sold bread and milk, now sells postcards and souvenir jewellery; the room which held exhibitions by industry offering jobs to graduates, now becomes a creche; the seating accommodation for meals is boosted by the addition of the breakfast room which up till then has been used by the restaurant contractor to cater for wedding parties and Law Club dinners. Best of all, you have a staff at hand—all the students who want to stay on and earn money. And the man who was merely business manager under the professor, blossoms into a proper hotel manager. Simple altogether!"

"Just a little undordono, please."