At the vineyard I took my stuff into Helmut's, my boss and contact, office and met Alex. Alex and his wife Elizabeth - both Romanian originally - live on the farm and they're in charge of cleaning the restaurant among other things. They also accommodate a lot of new workers and I'm one of the lucky ones for this weekend.
Then I met Helmut and while I was under the assumption that we were going to talk about my job, he instructed me to grab myself a pair of rubber boots and tools and go to work. So I did. During the first day I compressed some dirt under a pipe, leveled out the ground where the open pipe had been, dug a hole in the road to find a burst in that same pipe and helped level a new access road to a forthcoming mixer's stand. I also felt a little lost in between since I didn't really know who I should be taking my orders from. I also met Sacha from Germany and he told me that I would be moving in with him and his girlfriend Ana as soon as they could prepare a room for me. It's as if they WANTED me to live them before they even met me. It's safe to say that Sacha is probably my favorite person here.
The vineyard is pretty big. It consists of some actually vineyards, most of them with white grapes assume. There's the main building which has the "cellar door" aka. the tasting restaurant at the front, after that is the restaurant with gourmet food and fine wine, naturally and next to the restaurant behind the bar and partly outside is the café. Next to that are some offices like Helmut's. From the café you can see the large field which already has a huge stage on it for concert season. Next Saturday's performer will be Simply Red.
After my first day Helmut told me that I would working under Sacha, who manages the restaurant, for the weekend and that I would work the same days as him from now since I'm going to be living with him. So my days off are Monday and Tuesday and the others I work. After work I took my stuff into Alex's car and got a lift to his house in the middle of the vineyard almost a "stone's throw" away from the main buildings. There I was welcomed by Elizabeth and her cooking which smelled almost as good as my grandma Pirkko-Mummi's, and two lovely dogs. Hazel is the young, active female who loves chasing and catching her tennis ball in mid air. She can jump the height of a car when she does this. The other dog is an older male and he likes to try to steal Hazel's ball since he can't catch it with speed.
So while Alex and Elizabeth went to work, I ate some food, watched some telly and fell asleep early.
On Saturday, after some breakfast of champions (pictured), I reported to work at 10 AM and Sacha pointed me to the bar where David in charge of the bar gave me a crash course in all the things around there. I mostly washed the dishes and polished the glasses at first. I also filled some water bottles and recycled a whole bunch of empty bottles. The term juoksupoika comes to mind. Errand boy?
So the day went along and I got some new stuff to do either selling fudge, - not packing fudge, selling! - getting more ice for the restaurant and so on. I had no idea how long I was going to be working and I felt a little tired most of the way. After the restaurant closed at five we kept on working cause the vineyard was reserved for a function. We washed and polished every dirty glass, fork, knife and spoon. We rearranged all the tables in the restaurant and set them all up really nicely. I took control of getting all the chairs in place since there weren't enough restaurant chairs for everyone. When it was all set somewhere around 6 PM we got a break and I finally got to eat something. 15 minutes later I was outside telling cars to drive to the main entrance for the red carpet instead of stopping at the back door at the café and the concert field while the sun set. I got to breathe a little while when the cars stopped flowing in and after an hour I headed back in.
8 PM. 9 PM. 10 PM. The day just went on and on. The function was going to continue until midnight. A lot of polished cutlery and glasses later and after setting the tables again for breakfast, we got off work. After 16 hours of work.
The end of the evening was actually quite fun. Ar around 11 there were a lot of us polishing the glasses at the Cellar Door and we had some fun just talking. One of the girl waitresses is a special ed teacher, another one, Kelly, turned 26 at midnight and Tim and Darcy, two younger fellas were quite a funny pair. Tim actually does a spot on German accented Sacha, sometimes to his face and incredible good. "Yes sacha, I vill do anysing for you!"
In the dark I walked back to Alex's who spent the whole night cleaning the restaurant. Today I woke up, had some French toast (not nearly as good as grandma's) and went back to work. I even delivered some drinks today! And wouldn't you know it, six hours went by in a breeze. I sold a lot of fudge today and many customers asked me where I was from, because of my accent.
Today I had to admit to myself that I really do have an accent. If I was to make a speech in English, I'd probably be able to do a good job but talking quickly I pronounce a lot of stuff badly and forget words when talking quickly. It also seems that I don't talk quite loud enough and I mumble the beginnings of my sentences. I should probably start saying "You know" or something like that when I start talking. Then again a lot of foreigners here use a much more broken version of English so I guess it's not too bad. I've also gotten a lot of compliments on my skills from foreigners but I gotta work on my Strine.
Speaking of broken English, I also met my other new flatmate, Ana, today. She was very nice and she gave me a lot of tips and nuances of the fudge selling and presentating business. We also talked about house rules (no insects, or the neighbor's cats inside the house) and working holiday backpacking.
After work I was greeted by some enthusiastic dogs and a meaty dinner. Alex and I took a drive to see Helmut's new farm -- check out the view -- where he was still working, driving a tractor between the rows with his glasses hanging at the edge of his nose for dear life.
Tomorrow morning Sacha will come get me and we might go to IKEA together and I will be moving to a spare room on their new home. I have no idea where it is or how much I have to pay rent. All I know is that they don't have a TV but they do have a portable DVD player. I'm excited. I'm...
Feeling Good.
Onko nut hjuva fiivis?
ReplyDelete