Working it at the Hostel

I have been working at the Aboriginal Hostel for a week and a half. I am really excited about this job so far. A typical day is fairly slow right now because it is the off season. In the morning, I get to work at 8 am and start to make breakfast for the guests. We serve waffles, coffee, tea, cereal, toast, jam and Nutella (most people in Europe put sugar, jam, or chocolate on their waffles rather than syrup). From about 9-1030, I sit and eat breakfast with the guests and just chat. It's pretty great. Most people make it out of the hostel by about 11 when I have a lot of down time.

Check-out is @ 12 and the cleaning girl, Wandi, gets the rooms cleaned and ready for the new arrivals. The new guests then straggle in throughout the day. Check-in consists of a short tour of the hostel, explaining a bit about the public transportation system, and some recommendations of sights to see.

Other than that, I get to just hang out and chat with whomever is in the hostel. The owner's name is Csaba, and he spends most of the day here on the computer. We had a staff meeting last week that was probably one of the worst meetings ever held. While Csaba seems to be a nice guy, and very fair and helpful, he's not exactly the best manager. He's more of an ideas guy and has a hard time actually getting anything done. The meeting last week was a follow up to on a month ago when the staff discussed making a lot of changes in an effort to improve the hostel. The rest of the girls were very heated at this meeting because they now have to host activities every night, such as mulled wine night, but aren't making any more money for this.

The meeting often switched between Hungarian and English, was accented by a lot of sighing, ey rolling, and general yelling at each other. To top off the whole meeting, the last topic of discussion (of course all in English so I felt extremely uncomfortable) was about why the other girls weren't offered day shifts before I was hired. So that was amazing.

The meeting was awful, and I left really worried about whether this was going to work out. At least for the next few days, the girls were very nice to me, so I'm still hopeful. I am working pretty hard on my Hungarian, and am coming along, slowly but surely. I'm not sure it will ever be useful for me to have this language skill after |I leave, but it's pretty useful now.

Also, because the average monthly salary here is about $500 per month, I am finding other ways to supplement my income. I have an English class starting tomorrow that meets twice a week. I also signed a contract to write for an online publication which will pay $5-$7 per article. And finally, I'll be leading a pub crawl on Staurday nights for tips. Hopefully everything combined will be enough to cover the bills!

Right now free time is pretty limited and I use most of it during the week to try and get sleep. Last weekend Liv and I spent Saturday at an English language used bookstore, and the had brunch. It was amazing and very relaxing. Sunday we went to back to back movies and watched "Capitalism: A Love Story" and "Nine". Of course, Michael Moore's movie is what they all are, so take the "facts" with a grain of salt because there is no counter-point. But still, a poignant movie; I recommend it. "Nine" was alright, sometimes visually entertaining, but not a new story. And not an interesting one.

We will be going to see an art exhibit on Saturday with some Degas works; I'm excited about that! I think we will visit one fo the thermal spas with one of our Hungarian friends on Sunday. Should be fun!
That's about the gist of it. I heard big snow has hit there this week with more coming! WOW! We have had a lot of snow also, but not anywhere near that much! I hope you all still have toilet paper and food, and in the meantime, enjoy it!