I've been in Crete this summer and had a wonderful time. Among other places, hotel Doma was very interesting from a hobbyist point of view. There's an ancient safe at the entrance, many old keys and an old padlock hanging on the breakfast room wall, and there is an Italian safe in every room!
Since the keys are still in use, I blurred the room number on the tag, so nobody can file down a key like the one in the picture and go there and open "my" room.
I bought a couple of lock as souvenir, will post pictures next week.
I also noticed there are many postal boxes, some of them are pretty standard, with a master key that seems a lever one used by the postman and many wafer locks used by the single box owners.
And then there are less standard ones... locked in different ways.
Another play I stayed at for a few nights had a drawer full of locks in my room (a room usually used by the owners, but it was high season). Since these were not mine I haven't touched them, but it was a bit weird to sleep in a room with so many locks in a drawer.
Brilliant pics of the locks. I love the old metal padlock picture the most. Look forward to seeing more pics on the souvenir locks. Perhaps the locks in the draw were a sort of locksport minibar....
"The techs discovered that German locks were particularly difficult" - Robert Wallace, H. Keith Melton w. Henry R. Schlesinger, Spycraft: The secret history of the CIA's spytechs from communism to Al-Qaeda (New York: Dutton, 2008), p. 210
