This is an old hotel and smells a bit musty in some corners, but I liked it because the people were friendly and I had a very quiet room looking onto a courtyard which was no doubt very shabby in earlier times, but now has lots of ivy growing on the walls and looks quite pleasant. They let people keep their bicycles in the courtyard over night, which is a big plus point even though I didn't need it this time because I was using the Velib' bikes.
Breakfast choices were limited, as is usual in cheap Paris hotels, but what they had was fine and they never ran out of croissants.
Since this hotel is called the "Hotel of the 3 Nations" I of course wanted to know which three nations they had in mind, but nobody could tell me until I met the owner, a friendly Chinese woman who said that when she bought the hotel she kept the traditional name which it has had for many years. She doesn't know why that name was originally chosen, or by whom, but for her the three nations are the nation where the hotel is located (France) the nation she comes from (China) and whatever nation the guest comes from.
Otherwise the only Chinese aspect of the hotel is that in the bathroom the little packets of shower cream and shampoo have lots of Chinese writing on them, plus a few words in a charming variety of English.
The light blue packet is labeled:
Sharcart Shampoo
base make treatment
ANTI-DANARAFF
SOFTENING SHINY
show whole mode
women
formal elegant demeanour
And the pink packet is labeled:
Sharcart
Shower
base make treatment
FRAGRANCE
SKIN WHITERING
show whole mode
women
formal elegant demeanour
Any questions?
Second photo: Hotel des 3 Nations from the street.
Third photo: Lobby of the Hotel des 3 Nations.
Fourth photo: A girl on a Velib' bike riding past the hotel.
Fifth photo: Velib' station 10001 at Place Johann Strauss, just a block from the hotel.
Update: Thanks to VT member JLBG (Jean-Louis) for doing some research into the name of this hotel. He found several references to "the three nations" from various centuries. The earliest was from the year 1266, when the University of Paris had two rectors, one for the Nation of France and one for "the three Nations of Picardie, Normandie and England."
Jean-Louis wrote "That would be fine but seems too old."
So he kept on looking and found several other possibilities. The most plausible seems to be from the 19th century, as described by Karl Kautsky (1854-1938) in "The Three Sources of Marxism."
Kautsky has a chapter called "The synthesis of German, French and English thought" in which he writes:
"In the 19th century, three nations represented modern civilization. Only someone who had assimilated the spirit of all three, and had thus armed himself with all the acquisitions of his century, could have produced the immense body of work that Marx accomplished.
The synthesis of the thought of these three nations, in which each of them loses its unilateral aspect, constitutes the point of departure for the historical contribution of Marx and Engels." (My translation.)
After finding this quotation, Jean-Louis wrote: "Not sure that this is THE explanation but that gave me a clue. I went back to 'Hotel des trois Nations' and found that it was 'A quelques minutes de la Gare de l'Est et de la Gare du Nord'. Then, it is clear that the three Nations are France, Germany (Gare de l'Est) and England (Gare du Nord). I have always learned that the more obvious the explanation is, the more likely it is to be true, so I believe this is THE explanation. Thank you Karl Marx for the clue!"
And thank you Jean-Louis for checking this out!
