This Hotel Is Rubbish -- No, Really

It takes a village to build a hotel, does it? Apparently, for that's how much recycled junk has been used to construct a new hotel in Madrid.

Now, your average-sized village wouldn't take too long to generate 12 tons of junk (and that's how much it took), but you get the idea.

Actually, what is the idea? The hotel is the brainchild of H.A. Shult, a German sculptor and performance artist known for his rubbish-inspired exhibits. So maybe this is just another of his stunts. (Among other noteworthy events, he once hired a pilot to crash a small plane into the garbage dump on Staten Island.)

Still, this is a hotel we're talking about. The doors are already open. You can certainly go in, although you can't stay the night — the five double rooms are already booked. And, apparently, the hotel won't be taking reservations after the four days for which those rooms are already booked.

So it's an object lesson: The world is full of rubbish, and we are living in it (and by it he means rubbish, not the world — unless he means that the world is rubbish, in which case it is the thing that it is. — got it?).

Actually, this guy should be commended because he says that the real purpose of his hotel stunt is to call attention to the giant mountain of rubbish floating in the world's oceans and routinely washing up onto the world's beaches. Now that's something we all need to address.

Check out the video here.