Coffee for breakfast

How successful NTV journalists won a tender for hotel management in the Spanish outback. They had to wash the whole building with their own hands. And then problems with the staff began - it turned out that many Spaniards do not really like to work, but prefer to live on benefits

The hotel that we won in the department belongs to the city hall. He is both common and nobody. So no one really loved him. And as soon as we drove into it, the house immediately began to complain about our life. He suddenly began to blink with light and sparkled until he knocked out all the traffic jams. Or cried with pipes, which at first tragically howled, and then spilled onto the first floor with waterfalls. The house was like an unscrupulous child - neglected and capricious.

We spent a fortune on an electrician and a plumber, washed 20 rooms, 18 toilets, three corridors and four stairs, a huge sebaceous kitchen, a restaurant and a bar. We forgot about food, sleep, even forgot our child a couple of times. We had nothing to occupy Marusya, so she was wandered where we washed, and played with what was in abundance - with rags and buckets.

I no longer woke up from panic attacks, I was generally not up to psychoses, PMS and other garbage, characteristic of a subtle and experiencing soul. I crawled to the bed, and that’s it.

Well, now, without unnecessary whining, we will evaluate the disposition:

Given: two journalists turned out to be the managers of the hotel, restaurant and bar in the Spanish village. July a month is the height of the season. The city hall insists that we open in a week, because archaeologists come, who will dig an ancient city nearby, and we have a lot to sleep.

Need to:

First: Find the staff.

We read that in Spain, unemployment. This is so. But it is also true that in Spain there are many all sorts of benefits. Find the Spaniard, ready to work 40 hours a week, mainly on weekends and holidays, is almost impossible for a thousand euros. Especially in the village.

Those who come to settle down, of course, are presented to the temporarily non -working kings of the world, show their questionnaires composed the day before. We had to ask everyone an official statement of previous places of work, but we did not know that. And they believed in a word, and took it to work. So we took the chef and his girlfriend, who was supposed to be the chef of the hall. We took the Ecuadorian who worked as a good German car, and her son, he was an assistant to the cook. My university friend Katya also helped us a lot. She had already lived in Spain for several years and, of course, managed to work for everyone, including the waiter.

Second: it was necessary to decide what to feed people.

Our chef was funny menu, where there were a lot of incomprehensible words, including Chinese. He was very confident in himself, and we were sure that it was for a reason. He also always disappeared somewhere, apparently supporting the image of the temporarily unemployed king of the world. So with the suppliers we had to negotiate ourselves. And now two years have passed, and we still have some products from that first purchase. By the way, the suppliers turned out to be good people, one of the few who did not deceive us then. We are working with them now.

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Third: in the end, you need to open the company. Make a bunch of pieces of paper in order to sign a contract with the mayor. It was necessary to place us in all possible Spanish registers, the offices of which, of course, in Madrid, and this is 250 kilometers from the check. It happened like this: we were given a ticket for 9 hours 17 minutes. We woke up at five, at six we transferred a sleeping Marusya to the car, at 9:00 we were looking for a parking lot in Madrid. At 9:17 they put two signatures, at 9:18 they went back to the check to wash the hotel.

In all paper affairs, the lawyer Guillermo helped us, forever sweating in his suit in the Madrid overt. We found him, as they say, by the announcement. On the Internet, someone Antonio in a good Russian described all the possible benefits of working with his company. We called - Antonio spoke with us for a long time about what professional guys he and his lawyers. His dad worked earlier in Russia, so the Spaniard Antonio spoke perfectly in Russian and knew even more beautifully than to win Russians. Before we signed a contract with him, he often called, was wonderful, warning people. As soon as we put the signatures and transferred the money, Antonio smashed us with Guillermo, he himself, in a jacket, and stopped taking the phone.

By the way, lawyers working with Russians quite often take money forward. Many people think that it is accepted in Spain, but this is not so. After, when I began to work with the Spaniards (lawyers and accountants), no one ever took money from me in advance.

So, our Guillermo assured us that everything would be done in two accounts. Then in three accounts, four, five ... We were going on weeks !!! And the Guillermo still could not make us a company. And you won’t push-the money has already been paid. It’s good that my new village friends advised me an accountant in a neighboring town. She knew how to temporarily get out and do everything officially.

But the costume of our big lawyer needed two and a half months to issue us the company, and then he made it not without mistakes.

We more or less temporarily took shape as an individual entrepreneur and began to work. Our first clients were Spanish archaeologists. There were 20 of them. And for the first breakfast they ordered 20 different coffee! In Spain, how many people, so many coffee options. Short, with hot, cold, warm milk, with cognac, "long" with water and milk, with condensed milk, with ice in a separate glass, etc. etc. The first year every time a large company ordered coffee, I was always thrown into cold sweat.

Corrida stars in our bar; Masha plays with sex rags; Our chef is a cook on the left, and on the right my friend Katya; This was the hotel when we started working; Our Ecuadorian, chef and assistant chef photo: from personal archive

Honestly, I poorly remember the beginning of our work. All forces went into the muscles of the legs and arms, nothing left to remember. I remember that the boss all the time showed off, supporting the image of a steep pro, a girl of aesthetically reflected on glasses and cutlery, and we all washed, brought, carried away, removed and drove into Madrid, where the Guillermo climbed in a costume and endlessly lied.

And the heat in Spain in the summer is more abrupt than baptismal frosts in Russia. The body sweats and always some kind of sticky, the head periodically flies into sleep. You turn into a sweating brake. And of course, gastric viruses bloom, one of which we caught together. The worst of all was Marusa, she lay a rag and, unable to jump into the toilet every ten minutes, tearfully asked her to buy diapers, who had long been heroically abandoned.

Our first gestures as hoteliers were complete chaos and absurdity. A cherry on the cake was a city holiday. We have long fed archaeologists, accepted a couple of capricious Spaniards and Dutch cyclists. And suddenly our quiet village was unlawed in rude rich people, bitten teenagers and a drunken working class. Religious processions walked through the streets at night, and then street musicians - the crowd rose behind those and others. All night in the city square thundered Pops.

We crawled out on this holiday once, because we had to feel alive. The rest of the time we washed, cleaned, cooked, dragged endless beer boxes. Five days later we could no longer raise full boxes - there was no strength at all.

Spanish Toro is a special breed of a bull-for many Spaniards it is something like a deity ... which must be killed

On one of the most difficult days, the bar suddenly empty, people sank into the street. I went to the hotel porch. Because of the iron fence separating us from the square, the devil looked at me in the flesh. Black pile of muscles and hatred of humanity. He was all in sweat and from that dazzlingly shiny in the sun. The monster loudly inhaled the hot air with its huge body and, it seemed, was about to exhale with fire. It was a Spanish Toro - a special breed of a bull. For many Spaniards, he is something like a deity ... which must be killed.

Everyone hooted, called him, teased him, and when he began to hunt these little people, they, like mice, leaked through iron lattices, which were blocked by almost all the streets of the city.

And suddenly everyone calmed down, through the rising asphalt haze I saw how some pile of rags flew over the bull, so easily, lightly flew up as a feather ... I looked at these rags and realized that it was a man.

There was nobody on the square, only the bull threw his victim with horns.

Then, of course, everyone realized, distracted the animal, dragged a person. The Sires of the ambulance immediately sounded, the bull was driven to the square where Corrida was supposed to take place.

The crowd fell to our bar again. Everyone was satisfied - the sight took place. A polite man came up to me and asked where he and his friends can retire because they want to calmly drink coffee. I took them to the hall, where the staff had lunch at that moment. Our workers stared at the lord and his friends, opening their mouths. The soup dripped on work clothes. A minute later, all the staff blown away by the wind. When I came to find out why they behaved like idiots, they only repeated to me: “Ortega Kano! Ortega Kano! " Googling, I found out that the polite lord is the most famous Toreador of Spain. The star of the rank of Alla Pugacheva, or even cooler.

The holidays lasted a week. The first day after them was so quiet that it even became scary. It seemed that a nuclear war was going through, and we are the only ones who survived.

PS The person who was thrown by the bull surpassed and even appeared at the holiday, all in gypsum. But the bull died. He was killed by Toreador in the village Corrida.

Spain Emigration