Lost Dreams

There is, atop a hill overlooking the largest of all the lakes, the unfinished shell of a building that has spent decades falling apart, since the owners’ dream of having the best hotel on the lakes ran into reality some time in the 60’s. You can see it from miles around- the spot is very well chosen- but I had never been up to see it. This morning I decided to find a path, there had to be one, and if it was overgrown it would be easy to hack through, as the undergrowth is fairly sparse there.

It took a few miles, a very interesting and rather steep few miles, of wandering over the hills behind the village before I found a way to get to it, but I got there in the end. It is well-designed, all the rooms have balconies that look out over the water into the distant hills, and there is a large terrace and walked on which it was doubtless imagined that guests would sit in the evening to eat and drink late into the night, in the open air and with the beauty of the landscape below them.

Well-conceived, but it never opened. In fact it is no more than a shell, and now that there are many cheap hotels nearby and building in the park area- it falls within it- has long been forbidden, it will probably stand in proud and ever greater ruin until it’s declared unsafe and destroyed.

The original owners are probably dead. They moved on to other dreams, some of which worked out, I believe, and left us a monument to the best-laid plans.