Getting on the "Pfiff Reisen" coach, I was introduced to Andi and Andi, both from the same German town... one is now a skiing instructor here and the other is another "teamer" like me. The coach left Cologne Messe at 23.15 and I think I only got about 2 hours sleep by the time we arrived in Les Crosets, Switzerland at 9 am. (I definitively missed 3 am, but I saw 2 am and 4 am.)
Just before we got to Les Crosets, we stopped off at a lake at the bottom of the mountain, a truly beautiful sight to see, even if it was at 7.30 am:
After everybody put their stuff in a room, we all had breakfast (buffet) - then the guests went off to ski and Andi and I joined the rest of the "Teamers". Saturday is change-over-day here so there are twice as many guests and twice as much work. Since we are new, Andi and I were put on cleaning the bathrooms. There are 30 something rooms here and I cleaned about 10 bathrooms during the morning.
After that, I went round with Liesel (the sort-of Service Team Boss) as she checked all the rooms, and I followed her with a cloth and multi-purpose spray, to finish off any areas she wasn't happy with.
Then I folded up all the deck chairs and put them in the right places on the balconies, and took in all the plastic chairs from outside that actually belong inside.
Break time for about 1 hour to 30 minutes.
Where I showered and brushed my teeth for the first time since Friday morning. YUM!
 |
| The slopes |
Lay the tables for the leaving guests dinner - "Leavers Soup". Wait for them to finish eating, during which, Robert (the cook) showed me how to deep fry Cordon Bleu so I made about 100 for the arriving guests. Then prepare tuna salad, get all the dirty dishes, and re-lay the tables for the arriving guests.
Be introduced to the arriving guests. All the workers were individually introduced and I was introduced with something like "It's an incredible thing when someone whose travelling the world wishes to take a break and come and work specifically for you and that's why it's a great pleasure to introduce Lucy".
Now everybody thinks I am here to take a break from travelling, which I don't really get how that works, because well, I am "travelling" right now, by being here. Oh well!
Then prepare 100 dishes of chocolate sauce, strawberry sauce and ice cream. Serve the ice cream, eat an ice cream back in the kitchen. And then take in all the dishes and spend about 2 hours putting the items through the dishwasher and drying them afterwards.
Clean the kitchen surfaces, mop the floor and finally by 9 pm we were all finished.
 |
| The hotel |
Stay in the bar until 10 pm where I found out that I get non-alcoholic drinks for free, except Red Bull, and Red Bull and alcoholic drinks for half price plus one "free-change-over-day-beer" or any other alcoholic drink, every Saturday. Since I can't drink until the 1st of April, I have "saved" my free Saturday drink until then! Win.
10 pm hit and I went to bed and fell asleep before I had even considered the notion of sleep.
6.30 am came along and, well, since I had breakfast duty, I had to get up and get the breakfast ready for 8 am. I was supposed to be down in the kitchen by 7 am but ended up being 15 minutes late. Woops!
But managed to get everything ready for 8, so not too bad. Ate breakfast, hired some skis (I get a free lift pass working here plus 50% off equipment hire) and then began to clean the dishes etc. By 11.15 am, my duties for the day were over and me and the cook Robert went off to ski.
Bit shaky at first since I haven't skied in about 5 years (since I broke my thumb) but by slope 4 or 5, I was confident again and enjoying myself. Though my muscles started to give up around slope 6 so we headed back to the hotel.
I don't have any duties now until tomorrow dinner time and then on Wednesday the whole place gets cleaned again (by us) and in the evening I am on bar duty... looking forward to that one!
Auf Wiedersehen, au revoir, zbohom etc.
Lucy xxo
No comments:
Post a Comment