There’s something about a breakfast buffet
in a high-rise hotel overlooking the city at sunrise that is so enjoyable.
Maybe it’s the quiet sense of being above it all, just for a moment, coffee in
hand and plate in tow, before rejoining the day’s to-do list. There’s the
familiar din of business conversations: more abrupt, but also more honest and
more varied than the romantic dinner dialogues I overheard the night before.
Fewer scripted flirting, more arguments about logistics and budget approvals,
or the boss who is making unrealistic demands on their team. Refreshing, in its
own way.
In general, people are simply more
interesting in the morning. Their faces still carry traces of sleep, their
guard not yet fully raised. There’s a softness to them, a kind of unfiltered
version of whoever they normally pretend to be.
I’ve always liked the mornings of business
travel. They act as a buffer zone, a kind of gentle off-ramp into the day.
Everyone gets a moment to slowly stretch their business persona, like a cat
testing its limbs, with a few cautious rounds of morning callisthenics: one
eyebrow raise, one polite nod, one half-hearted scroll through emails.
I personally never got used to those
early-morning meet-and-greets with colleagues or workshop participants. The
idea of casual conversation over breakfast, pre-caffeine, has always struck me
as vaguely cruel. Instead, I would sneak down as soon as the breakfast buffet
was open, usually around 6:30 a.m., and stake out a spot for some peaceful
solitude before the rush arrived.
I love watching the other guests drift in,
still a bit foggy, helping themselves to eggs they don’t really want and fruit
they’ll ignore. I make up stories about their lives, based entirely on how they
butter their toast or whether they take the last croissant without guilt. It’s
like cinema in real life, only slower, and with less predictable dialogue.
That’s the fun of travelling alone. You’re
not exactly alone. You’re more like a corner piece in someone else’s jigsaw
puzzle: quietly important, yet never the centre of the picture. And weirdly, in
the morning, people don’t seem to mind your presence. They speak freely, even
when you're seated right next to them. No one lowers their voice. No one
glances around to check who might be listening. No one cares.
Why is that? In the evenings, the same
people are shrouded in a kind of self-imposed mystery, tucked into dimly lit
corners of restaurants, speaking in cryptic half-sentences, pretending they’re
invisible or, at the very least, uninterested in being known. It’s a
performance of privacy.
Even those who clearly want to be seen will
pretend otherwise. They arrange their expressions with care, like a shop
window. They shield their privacy as if it were sacred. And perhaps it is. Yet
in the morning, something shifts. Over lukewarm eggs and second-rate coffee,
people let their guard down. They chat about the night before, half-laughing at
their own disclosures, and gesture lazily toward the day ahead, as if it might
turn out better than expected.
