Most new cadets fly direct into Starfleet Academy. The spaceport there is sleek and sterile and efficient, bustling with a hive of grinning young men and women from across the galaxy. It lets out immediately into the student union, which is politely interethnic, decorated with the most inoffensive art from dozens of cultures. The place is bland as homogenized milk, the people a thousand alien molecules passing through the smooth stainless steel and glass of the Academy.
T'Pring books a rickety shuttle with a third-class spaceline, destination Germany. She is the only Vulcan on board; the rest of the passengers are human, tourists, vacationers, their alien sweat-smell acrid on the air. Watching the school group across the aisle from her, T'Pring observes the children squirming in their seats, flipping through glossy-paged magazines, poking and prodding each other in some sort of play-fight.
Then they disembark, and T'Pring retrieves her single regulation suitcase and walks through the moonlit streets of Dresden.
Underfoot, the rain-washed paving stones refract light in a muted rainbow of colors. This is probably not, T'Pring concludes, their purpose; before hovercars came into widespread usage, they would have provided support and traction for ground-bound locomotion. Nevertheless, the effect is aesthetically pleasing.
The sky is marked out in gradations of blue, whitish-blue where city lights swallow the stars, dark blue that is massed clouds. Stone arches, vaulting pinnacles, balconies of wrought iron: the construction of each must have been chosen with an eye to form, but with no hindrance to function. Someone has scrawled their initials across the long mural of horses and their armored riders, and behind a marble pillar, a dustbin lies tumbled on its side, pooling water.
The hotel T'Pring approaches is a hybrid sort of a building. Parts of it are visibly weather-worn, its skeleton the half-defunct remains of a structure from an age gone by. The rest, erupting from chipped stone and flaking plaster, is an extrusion of shining metal and tinted plexiglass, patchworking the battered building into a coherent whole. T'Pring had scrolled through six pages of onion domes and skyscrapers to find this place, buried in the depths of the hotel listings.
First the doorman, and then the clerk at the front desk, greets her in German. T'Pring recognizes both the inherent value of language preservation and its role in cultural diversity, but she finds the insistent usage to be inefficient in this context. Surely the hotel managers are aware that most visitors will not be natives of the region, and consequently are unlikely to be fluent in the local language.
"I have a room booked under the name of T'Pring," she tells the clerk in Standard.
His eyes running over a datapad, the man tugs at one pierced earlobe, then types in a search. "Nothing under that name," he tells her. "You sure you're in the right place? Or maybe it's under another name?"
"I am certain," T'Pring assures him. "Are you confident in your ability to operate the database?"
The man gives half a laugh at that, short and sudden. "Yeah, yeah I am," he says, but types in another search, belying his words. "Sorry, there's definitely nothing open now, all our rooms are actually full. Want me to phone somewhere else for you?"
"That will not be necessary." T'Pring picks up her suitcase, mentally running over the airport schedule. A plane will depart in less than an hour, and will likely have empty seats, due to the lateness of the hour. Rest can be postponed until she reaches the dormitory without serious detriment to her health. "I do, however, recommend that you review your booking system, as it appears to be malfunctioning."
"Sure, lady, I'll get right on that. Want me to call you a taxi?"
"That will not be necessary," T'Pring says again, and walks out of the hotel lobby into the cold night air.