Where are we when we travel? David Wagner, awarded the Leipzig Book Fair Prize for his book "Life," writes in his new book about hotel rooms as everyone knows them and yet has never seen them before. A man travels from city to city, across Germany and Europe to China and Iran, but his eyes are always only on this: hotel rooms. He can’t get enough of them, marveling with never-fading curiosity at all that exists: strawberries in a little bowl. Is there a pencil next to the phone – does that, in his experience, indicate a better hotel – or a ballpoint pen? Wildly patterned carpets seem to have stains already incorporated into them. Energy-saving bulbs; he should have brought light bulbs. "To read, I should actually sit in the bathroom; there, in the makeup light, it’s bright enough." A cultural history of underwear.