2 Scottish girls, 2 long weeks, 2 Greek islands
Trip Start
Jun 03, 2006
1
3
Trip End
Jun 19, 2006
Where I stayed
Hersonissos, Greece
Sunday, June 18, 2006
It started at the end of May when I was applying for jobs abroad, anything and everything I found online, I applied for - I wasn't fussy, I'd go anywhere, and decided to accept the first job offer whatever it may be.
Soon after, I receieved a call from a bar in Crete offering me the chance to join their team as a barmaid. I jumped at the chance, started packing and announced that I was leaving for Greece again. Zoe decided to come with me, hoping to find a job once out there.
We flew out on Saturday night and arrived in Heraklion, the capital of Crete at 1.00am on Sunday 4th June. After experiencing the worst flight landing I've ever experienced (some people actually screamed!), we were relieved to be met by 3 smiling faces at the airport waiting to take us to our new home. John (25 year old Greek/South African youngest son of the owner of the bar, restaurant and apartment blocks I'd be working in), Nikki (John's 29 year old Dutch girlfriend) and Carola (the 21 year old Dutch barmaid).
Once we arrived in Hersonissos, we were shown to our room. Basic doesn't even begin to describe it. It was one of the basement rooms of an old hotel, which had recieved a few licks of paint to disguise the true condition of it. It was a small room with 2 single beds and not much else. There was a toilet/shower room which measured about 3x3ft. There was also one small window which was too high off the ground for us to look out of and which had bars on the outside! We paid 300 Euros upfront for a month's rent, only to discover that other workers were paying the same for beach-front apartments with kitchen areas and pools! :-( Apparently this was the cheapest room John and Nikki could find for us... it didn't exactly inspire us with confidence. No guest in their right mind would choose to stay in such a room and we could only guess that there was a bit of backhanding going on between John and Nikki and the hotel owner. Of course, we recieved no reciept for our payment...
After dumping our cases, we went out for drinks with John and Nikki, Carola and some of their guests. Hersonissos was a busy, bustling town by night, but there was something odd about the place that I couldn't put my finger on. Then it dawned on me. EVERYONE was speaking in Dutch!
The following day it became apparent that we'd perhaps drawn the short straw - this was not the Greece I knew and loved, or had hoped to spend a Summer working in...
There was a beach, but it was narrow and rocky and overpopulated with tourists (99% Dutch, Hersonissos being a Dutch resort). The town itself basically stretched 1 mile in length, and was more or less one long street packed with tacky souvenir shops, 1.50 Euro shops (similar to British 99p shops), fast food joints, souvlaki shops, pastry shops, bars and nightclubs. It was over-built and over-crowded - no inch of the street was spared.
Willing to give it a go, I started work at the bar the following night. The bar itself was cute and in a nice location on a rock overlooking the beach at the end of the main street. This, however, turned out to be a bit of a drawback - because of the remote location away from the main strip of bars and clubs, we didn't recieve many young, fun-seeking tourists - only older Dutch couples/families that were staying in the apartment block.
Nikki, who I worked alongside in the bar, being Dutch, spoke in Dutch to the customers. This was fair enough, and I could understand this suited her and the customers better than speaking in English. While I tried to pay attention and look involved in bar conversations it was difficult and mentally draining. I would pick up the odd Dutch word common with old Scots language and use these language similarities to try and piece each conversation together, but in vain. It was impossible to take part in any discussion. So I resigned myself to cleaning the same spots over and over again, trying to look too busy to distract myself from my work - my perfect excuse not to look like a spare part. I was quite happy doing this, until Nikki told me off for not talking to people! Nikki and John were well aware that I couldn't speak Dutch before they employed me in their Dutch bar. I expressed my concerns that I couldn't take part in discussions even though I wanted to because of the language barrier. Nikki promised to "try and remember" to speak in English for my sake. Her argument was that 99% of customers CAN speak English, and that if I tried speaking to them in English, they would reply in English. My argument, after several unnsuccessful attempts at making small talk, was that although they could, they chose not to. Maybe it was my Scottish accent that people had difficulty understanding, who knows, although I am very conscious of that when travelling and always try and tone down a notch or two when conversing with other nationalities. But I felt like I was speaking in Mandarin, not English and I felt that my lack of ability to be understood reflected my level of intelligence, so I eventually gave up altogether.
During my second night at work, I got pulled up for what I was wearing. I could understand if I was wearing a tiny miniskirt that left nothing to the imagination, but tarty is not my style at all. Especially when travelling, I like to make the most of the feminine curves - think natural but classy! This particular day I was wearing a full-length, flowing skirt of different shades of green and a flattering yellow t-shirt with a white halterneck bikini top on underneath as opposed to a heavy, restricting bra. Apparently this was not appropriate for work, said Nikki, who herself would wear open toe flip flops (highly irresponsible and dangerous for working behind a bar in my opinion!) and NO BRA or bikini or any kind of support whatsoever underneath her strappy vest tops!! Charlie Dimmock eat your heart out (British female gardener, infamous for digging up weeds, planting things and doing general gardening stuff on TV while obviously not wearing any kind of mammarian support)! I had to laugh when she said they were not aiming for the 'beach look' - even though the bar, restaurant and apartments were situated right on the beach front!
I think the last straw came when the World Cup started, and I expected us to be routing for Greece - only to turn up for work to discover the bar had been decorated in orange in support of Holland!
Zoe, meanwhile, had found a bar job and left after the 1st night.
With Nikki and I having to work so closely together, tensions started running high, especially when I didn't do things EXACTLY as she liked them to be done. The oranges had to be squeezed in the correct way for the fresh orange juice, the sparklers on the cocktails had to be sticking out at just the right angle, the coffee cup handles had to be presented to customers facing the right so it could be picked up easily... all this, and yet she was aiming for an informal atmosphere behind the bar!
So, Hersonissos wasn't really what I'd thought it'd be. Despite the beautiful weather and beaches, there was still something missing - it takes more than that to be contented.
Because we didn't have a kitchen area, a fridge, or even a kettle, we were forced to eat out every day, which wasn't cheap. I soon ran out of money. I explained my situation to John and Nikki and confided in them that I wasn't really happy, giving them the chance to look for another barmaid. They told me I felt the way I did because I wasn't making a conscious effort to set my alarm and wake up every morning and go out and do things, and also because I wasn't eating properly. Well yeah - but I think I had a good excuse! There was nothing to do, and a diet of cheap fast-food was only ever going to keep my motivated and energised for so long, especially after becoming a healthy-living, keep fit fanatic in the months leading up to leaving for Greece! It was a chore even to rise from bed in the tiny, darkened basement room.
I decided to ask for a sub so that I could enojy a better quality of life, eat better and do more things like take a bus trip to Malia which was the next town. Although we never made it to Malia for a day trip, I often wondered what it would've been like to work and live there. Malia is the British version of Hersonissos, and needless to say, Nikki and John were quick to shoot it down in flames. They described it as being awful, and full of English tourists falling about drunk - to me, it sounded like heaven! I could only dream of having a conversation with a fellow English-speaker.
Originally, the boss had planned to pay me monthly, but I later learned that you should never accept a monthly wage from an employer offering a 3 or 4 month Summer job. On my 4th night at work, John's father slipped me a wad of notes in my pocket. I made my excuses and nipped to the toilet to count it - 200 Euros!
After getting home that night after work I told Zoe about the money... we sat up dreaming of what we could do if only I didn't have morals... a midnight flit to another town, another island even! But then I realised that actually no-one had treated us with respect, despite being nice to us on the surface. We had been treated just as any 2 unsuspecting and excited British working travellers would be treated. We'd been duped into paying upfront 300 Euros for a *dreadful* room that had been pre-arranged for us. The hotel owner had made it clear that we were welcome to move out at anytime, but also that even if we only were to stay for a few nights, we wouldn't see any of our 300 Euros again. My boss was going to pay me monthly, yet on thinking about the advice from other bar workers in Hersonissos, I could see their point - no Summer job should ever offer a monthly wage.
So that was that, and for the first time since arriving in Crete, we set our mobile phone alarms to go off early the next morning...
To be continued...
