Myths and reality: How I worked as a hostess in Courchevel
Courchevel - a resort with a certain reputation and in fact common name. But he has another side that does not fall into the gossip reports. Karina Starobina told how a hostess worked for several months in one of the resort's chalets, what Courchevel really is, who is resting there and how the life of the famous ski resort is arranged.
Unexpected offer
In December 2015, I found myself in the following position: gloomy London, insanely boring new work with Ixelian tables, boring colleagues and stupid gossip, living in the same house with a former young man who was not going to move out, and a complete lack of plans for Christmas. As a fan of How I Met Your Mother, I believe in the power of the universe. A few months before, two brothers from New Zealand, Shea and Taylor, who work as cooks and travel the world, stayed in our house. Sneaky opening Facebook on an unloved job, I saw one of them in the news feed: "We are now working in a chalet at the resort in Courchevel, we need a reliable person who can fly as soon as possible and work with us." "We have to quit work and move to the Alps!" - I called my neighbor at lunchtime. "Uh-uh, okay!" she answered. So the first of January, I went straight from the New Year's party to an adventure. At the party, of course, they stole my phone, so I had to scratch the number of the person I met with a pen on my hand.
La Tania
I knew very little about Courchevel: rich classmates went there for the winter holidays, and once again Prokhorov was detained there. I got to La Tanya on the evening of January 1st. Brothers New Zealanders Shea and Taylor greeted me with hangover stories about New Year's Eve and immediately took me to the pub to get acquainted. La Tania is a small resort that was built for the 1992 Winter Olympics. All the rich Russians, about whom funny legends walk, climb "higher" - to the resorts of 1850 and 1650 (it is believed that the higher the resort, the steeper). In La Tania, everyone speaks English - both guests and seasonal workers (this is the name of everyone who is at the resort as attendants). Seasonaries who work in the resorts of 1850 and 1650 are very fond of Russian guests for their generous tips - according to legend, they are taken out of suitcases stuffed with cash. My chalet was called Baikal, and the local pub was La Taiga.
In general, La Tania turned out to be a rather modest place where middle-class Englishmen come and save for a trip throughout the year. To be honest, I have never been to a ski resort, so I had little idea how things really were. My new temporary place of work and residence turned out to be a tiny village of wooden chalets. There is one small square with a tourist center, three restaurants and a pub. I lived in the basement of one chalet, and worked in another. There was no window in my room (my future boss "forgot" about this to tell me by phone), but I didn’t have to share accommodation with other seasonal workers - usually several people sleep in the room.
Work at the resort
A few days before the adventure, I got a funny contract. One of the points read: "Any night entertainment with the guests is not welcome, if you really really need, then do it away from the chalet." This item, by the way, to the rage of the boss, my colleagues did not like to perform very much.
The working day of the chalet-girl is arranged like this: at 7:15 you have to be in the chalet (from my room it was about ten minutes on foot, although usually the hostesses live in special rooms in their own chalet). You remove the remnants of yesterday's guests' fun, set the table, make coffee, make sandwiches for lunch, which guests take with them. You serve breakfast, wait for the guests to gather and go for a ride, clean the kitchen and the rooms. By 11 am, as a rule, you can already go for a drive. Back to return to 18:00. We finished work around 9 pm - depending on how quickly the guests ate. One friend of the chef said that when he wanted to finish the work quickly, he turned on the guests a jovial house so that they would not linger. It turns out it works.
The salary of a chalet girl is 70 euros per week, while you can live on tips, postponing the entire salary. But usually you can not stand it and immediately go to buy equipment for snowboarding - somehow I spent my monthly salary on a cool snowboard jacket. At the same time you are fed three times a day, you do not pay for renting an apartment - as if you live with your parents again.
The hardest day is Saturday, the so-called changeover day. On this day, guests come and go, so you need to change and clean almost everything. My longest "shift day" lasted about 16 hours: a huge stone fell on the road, so that the guests could not reach us. The most unpleasant thing is to empty the jacuzzi outside, and this is the first task after the guests leave. To do this, lower one end of the hose into the jacuzzi, and put the other end in your mouth and draw all the air out of your way so that the water starts to pour on the snow. If you do not have time to remove the hose in time, water with wild content of chlorine, in which people sat every week for a week, can get into your mouth. Jacuzzi is generally a favorite entertainment for seasonal workers, because the staff is absolutely not allowed to climb into them. In the night after the pub, seasonals are engaged in "tubbing" - trying to get into the hot tub as much as possible so that nobody will notice you.
The most interesting thing about the work of the chalet girl is the constant change of people you need to look after and care for. Families with small children, noisy groups of university friends, low-key middle-aged couples, or even former seasonal workers, sadly admitted that "the season was the best time in their lives." Someone was capricious, for someone it was necessary to cook a special meal, but in general the work is very simple, and the guests are smiling and are always interested in your life. One time a guest broke his arm on the very first day on the slope, but we found books, board games and a footpath map for him.
In general, you feel not as a service staff, but rather as a caring friend. On the night before departure, guests usually invited us to sit at the table, offered us wine and were very grateful. We recognized the price of gratitude the next morning when we saw the tip left. The largest amount was, it seems, 330 euros for three. And Canadians somehow left 9 euro 90 cents - it was even funny.
New hobby
"You either die yourself, or kill me, or break a leg!" - I, my snowboard coach, two children and a shy Englishman, are standing at the top of the red (almost the most difficult) track, and it seems to me that the first panic attack in my life begins. My boss somehow agreed on five free lessons with a French coach in a group for beginners. The coach laughed at me and, after fifteen minutes of the first lesson, declared that I could not do anything and should start with skis. I became obstinate and still remained in the group, so in the next lessons I held onto the trainer and fell endlessly, fell and fell. After five sessions of confidence, I did not feel (by the way, my legs, too), I could not drive more than three meters, but the coach was laughing at me. This is his "push on your FRONT foot" with a French accent imprinted in my head for a long time.
During independent daily attacks on the slope, I met my favorite character - Glenn. Glenn is a 65-year-old Englishman, a former surfing champion who spent 17 seasons in a row in La Tanya, lives in a trailer and teaches snowboarding for a couple pints of light beer. "Any fool can ride a snowboard," Glenn told me. So I began to succeed. This funny comparison of the French coach and Glenn taught me how to relate to life - instead of “You will never succeed, you have to give up” to think: “Yes, this is easy!” Since then, when something seems too complicated, I remember the mountainside and the funny sunglasses of Glenn, which reflected my frightened face. You get used to the mountain air, slopes and daily snowboarding very quickly - you just don’t understand how you could live without it.
Seasoning
Seasons come here for different reasons: someone lives, changing seasons (snowboarding - in the winter, surfing - in the summer), someone arrived after school for a year before entering college, someone quit office work for the mountains. The general atmosphere is reminiscent of the first year of university with crazy parties, but now get up for work every day at 6:50. Many fell asleep on the beds of the guests while cleaning the rooms, then woke up and cleaned up again.
People placed in such a closed and slightly “unreal” space behave quite strangely. Morality and friendship are practically absent, but even the most stupid actions forgive each other. One week in the atmosphere of the season is like three months in an ordinary world: people have time to quarrel, make peace, shout and make friends again. There is a lot of gossip (as in any small town, probably), and people with whom you work love to complain to the boss. For example, an Australian girl liked to ask me to come back later ("Anyway, there's nothing to do"), and then she complained to the boss that I was late. The main topics of conversation are snowboarding and the one who shook like last night. Everyone is very touching about the snow and they are madly waiting for the snowfall in order to ride the “powdery powder” - a fresh layer of snow.
At one point, I met the 40-year-old writer Mark. He lived in a trailer with Willow's Fox Terrier, wrote a novel and gave me a read "A Million Little Pieces" by James Frey. He once confessed to me that he once had a flat, a job, a wife, and then got sick of it, and in general he believes that "the best office is a mountain slope."
My boss deserves a separate mention. Ralph - an Englishman about 40 years old, who dresses as a teenager and loves the solarium. He has been living at this resort for twenty years, which he constantly reminds of. He himself was once a seasonal driver, and now rents two chalets. Ralph constantly went to extremes: he negotiated free classes on snowboarding and let me go early, then he kicked a bag of rubbish and screamed when the sugar bowl and the box of tea were unevenly on the table. We called him Pope - I really felt like I was living with my parents again. There are only two bars in La Tania, three minutes apart. Our dear boss knew the owner and all the staff, so he was told daily where we were, how much we drank and when we went home. In general, the feeling that I was a naughty child did not leave me the whole season.
Return
At the end of March there was very little snow left, which affected the number of guests. Therefore, my boss announced to me that I was going home soon, although I was planning to leave a month later. To be honest, I sighed with relief - I really wanted to return to the real world. When the snow melts, most of the tracks close, it becomes almost impossible to ride. All books have been read, all people are painfully familiar, and indeed I want to return to my life, which has been paused. So I got into my snowboard boots (they didn’t fit in a suitcase) and went first to my parents in Riga, and a week later to London. Of course, it is interesting to take a break from the usual life and break into such an adventure, but I am going back only as a guest. I am very proud of the insane decision to drop everything. Any undertaking is easier to implement than it seems, the main thing is not to listen to anyone but yourself.
In early April, I was relieved to find myself on the previously hated Oxford Street: at last I could walk down a street where nobody knows me. A few months later I tried to meet with familiar seasonal workers who returned to their native Portsmouth. Talking to us was nothing at all, except to remember the season. In winter, of course, I now really want to go to the slope, but my adventure always reminds me of the Spider-Man suit, which one of the guests forgot in the chalet. Well, and my cool snowboard jacket.
Photo: JL - stock.adobe.com, jon11 -stock.adobe.com, JC DRAPIER- stock.adobe.com, Jonr67 -stock.adobe.com, Paul Vinten - stock.adobe.com
