Hoilday Expectations

'When you travel, remember that a foreign country is not designed to make you comfortable. It is designed to make its own people comfortable' - Clifton Fadiman

I like surprises, I like to travel to the unknown. In September I visited my friend in Thailand after an amazing winter in New Zealand. Totally unprepared. The only thing I was sure about was my flight. And you know what? I like to be in situations like this. However, this is not true for the majority of the European population.

Before we go on a holiday we want to know every single detail. We feel it is necessary to plan our trip by the minute. We expect to know how the weather is going to be and are frustrated or disappointed when the weather God decides to throw around his schedule. Google is doing over hours in order to provide us with the latest images of the accommodation, restaurant, beach, the palm trees and the colour of the water. YouTube shows us beautiful videos of the destination or resort we are planning to go to. Trip Advisor gives us the possibility to read the opinions of previous visitors, however, we only tend to check the negative reviews. 

Isn't it sad that 'bad' weather could possibly spoil the holiday feeling? I believe holiday is an experience, a feeling, and this is going to be as perfect as I will make it.  The weather, the accommodation or the activities can only increase my happiness but will never be the main reason for it. The disappointment which arrises when the pictures on the website differ from the real thing is amazing to me. How could snow possibly influence your skiing holiday in a negative way, and believe me, people are moaning about this. Of course going on an holiday costs a lot of money and we want to have the best of it. Although, I think we start to expect too much.

If we stop having these high expectations and 'go with the flow' a bit more, holidays could actually be fun again. Sometimes we have to live with these uncertainties in order to keep us from being disappointed. We could do that 20 years ago, why shouldn't we be able to do that again? 

Employee treatment, work experience

How much should you tolerate when it comes to making money? This weekend I had the opportunity to finally set my boundaries when it comes to this. 

As I am a poor student, longing to go back to New Zealand in exactly 65 days, I need to scrip and save to keep the wolves from the door and should definitely make some money. Therefore, I signed up for any random gastronomy job in Salzburg. As I have some years of experience in this field I thought I had seen it all but it took a turn for the worst. 

I had to work in a congress center from noon till ten in the evening, all good for me, no problem. However, the moment I stepped in to this building I felt you could cut the atmosphere with a knife. I got this lovely first impression of what I thought was the manager, when his first words to me were 'Didn't you listen to me, I just explained you that!'. And, as you may expect, it didn't stay with this one amazing friendly sentence. We had to set the tables for about 900 people and this other, I think, manager just couldn't help reminding us that if we didn't work harder we would not get a break. This went on and on all day. I have never experienced something like this in the 24 years I have been on this planet. I wont go into further detail, let me just say, I have been treated better. 

The point I want to make is that I think people that sign up for a, maybe stress full, job like this should be able to work under pressure. Of course everything has to be perfect although if you are not able to threat your employees with respect I believe you have chosen the wrong career. If I should gain any knowledge out of this day then I can only say that these two gentlemen gave me the perfect example of how you should NOT treat the people that work for you. This will only give you a bad reputation and negative worth of mouth in the end. And believe me, I have spread the word.