British tourist discovers the true meaning of "hôtel de ville"

Oh all right then, it's still summer, and even though the French are gradually returning from their holidays, it remains nevertheless pretty much the silly season as far as news is concerned.

And the latest daft tale comes to you courtesy of a British woman who managed to get herself locked in a town hall last Friday, thinking she was checking into a hotel.

Huh?

A word of explanation perhaps, even though those of you with only a smattering of French will find it hard to credit that the woman in question managed to find herself in such a predicament.

In French "hôtel de ville" means "town hall", but the bungling 30-something Brit to the eastern French town of Dannemarie showed her command of the local language to be less than comprehensive when she mistook the building to be somewhere to spend the night; in other words a bona fide "hotel".

Ahem.

Apparently just before making her way to the check in (that wasn't), she decided to pop into the loo.

While going about her business, the town hall officials who had been attending a meeting in another part of the building, finished their get together, left the premises and locked up behind them.

Hard to believe perhaps and not an April fool - it's the wrong time of the year for that obviously.

But a story confirmed by the mayor of the town, reported in the French media, and also picked up by the venerable BBC.

"There had been a meeting of local officials at the time," said Paul Rumbach, the mayor of the town of just 2,500 inhabitants.

"When it finished some participants heard a noise coming from the toilets but didn't really pay much attention to it and locked the doors of the building behind them."

And so when the woman emerged, she found herself to be locked in with no means of escape and worse still the dawning realisation that the "hôtel de ville" was anything but a local lodging.

In spite of efforts to draw attention to her plight, which included switching the lights of the town hall on and off and leaving a message stuck to the inside of the building's glass doors in which she (in a standard of French which had led to her mishap in the first place) outlined her plight and sought help, she was forced to sleep overnight on a chair in the lobby.

It wasn't until nine o'clock the following morning that the local chemist who was passing by saw her message and was able to contact the mayor to secure her release.

And the moral of the tale? Well there isn't one really, apart perhaps from at least learning the rudiments of a language before setting out on holiday, especially of you're travelling alone as was the case of this woman.

The mayor is apparently considering having signs made with a translation of "hôtel de ville" in both English and German...presumably just in case.