Tips On Visiting A Country Without Seeing Any Of It And How To Abuse Room Service

 

Well, I have only one tip really and that is make sure you visit the country on work.

That way you can spend just as much time on a very rickety airbus plane, followed by a long wait for the proverbial conveyor belt to deliver your luggage upside down. You can stand at arrivals when you reach your destination looking lost and generally confused, searching for a man you don’t know, who may or may not have a sign that has your name mis-spelt on it and doesn’t speak a word of English. He will lead you to a smelly van and take you on a mystery tour to a hotel you can’t remember the name of and leave you at reception with a porter who will then take your very light luggage which you could carry yourself, up to your room and hang around looking uncomfortable whilst waiting for a tip. By the time you clock that he is in fact looking for a tip, you realise you haven’t actually got any change or what change actually is in Kroner or Kronan because you thought that Checkolsovakia was in the E.U and therefore must use euros as their currency (because you are very very silly, and not very up there in the intelligence department).

And..

Because when you got off the plane at Prague and waited some time for Mr Anonymous to pick you up, you got very thirsty with all the travelling. You saw a snack shop located very near arrivals so trudged over to pick up a coca-cola. When it came to your turn to pay, the assistant poured out a long stream of Germanic sounding words, with her tone going up at the end, which you took to mean she may have been asking a question, but you had no idea what. Panic stricken, you realised that you had to make a quick decision and fast. The options were;

a) Try speaking back in her language using similar Germanic melody and make it up as you go along,

b)Speak very bad French or..

c)Ask if she spoke English.

So, You use the little wit you have and decide on choice c). This turns out to be the right move and she replies in English as bad as the French you don’t speak. You hand her 10 euros and she gives you back change of 40 Kroner or Kronan or whatever it is. You find this overwhelmingly confusing, so as you wheelie your pink suitcase back to the arrivals area, you desperately try with your unmathematical brain to work out why she gave you a higher figure back in play money change than what you paid her with.

Hence,

when it comes to tipping the uncomfortable porter, you are not sure how much to give as you may be giving him the equivalent of 1000 pounds or euros or kronan or kroner… So you decide to ask if it would be possible to pay him later when your boyfriend gets back to the hotel..

By then you are completely Europeaned out. I mean please, I am I-R-I-S-H and I have lived most of my life in probably the two smallest islands in Europe. We don’t know much about the Euro mainland.

I have spent the past 5 months swimming freestyle in Paris and suddenly I found myself in Prague for 2 days on work with my brain completely suffocated.

After the uncomfortable and by then, slightly miffed porter left my room, I closed the door and exhaled. Time for my systematic hotel room check which goes something like this;

- Open all doors to cupboards and and drawers.

-Switch on and off all lights a couple of times, then work out the best ambiance collective.

-Airplane myself on the bed from as far a distance as the room will allow.

-Read the hotel instructions, including most importantly the room service menu.

-Take a tour around the bathroom, checking out array of complimentary smellys and lotions.

-Turn the water on and off in the bath to check water pressure.

-Make sure they have triangled the toilet paper (Why do they do that?).

-Switch on the tv and flick through the euro channels en route to the movie channel.

I found it all much to my satisfaction, and with a couple of hours till Frenchy got back from set to the hotel, I kicked off my trainers and dialled room service.

“Errr hallooooo, can I have one gin and tonic to room 215 please?” I said in my hotely voice.

Not long passed before I heard my room service knock at the door. I lay on the fabulously massive bed with BBC world news on and drained my gin whilst watching how the beavers had been set back into the lochs of Scotland on the tv.

Heaven.

Soon enough my tummy started to groan with hunger. I called Frenchy and he told me they were running late on set it would be another hour or so before he got back.

I decided I would have little snack before he got back and we ate.

“Errrr hallooo” I cooed down the phone “Couullldd I pleesseee have a prawn coctaillle to rooom 215?”.

 The room service fairy arrived again, with a little bowl containing a bowl of iceberg lettuce and 4 prawns teetering on top looking completely outnumbered amongst all that lettuce.

Not long after I had finished my lettuce, Frenchy arrived through our hotel door tired and hungry. We both giggled and yelped in an utterly childish fashion at the fancy room we had for two nights, punctuated with “Have you seen this?” and ” Look at the shower!” and “LETS GET ROOM SERVICE, I’M STARVING!!”

“Errrr hellllooooooo” I wafted down the phone receiver “Cud weeee haaave a cluuubbb saanndwich, the laaaamb cutleets and twoooo blaaaackk russssianss pleassse to room 215″.

It was a while before we got our room service this time. We waited and waited and got hungrier and hungrier. Frenchy decided to have a quick shower. Whilst he was in the shower the room service knock came at the door. I opened it to find a shiny silver trolley with a very pissed off room service waiter in the passenger seat. He rolled the silver trolley in and I stood there beaming at him, I was officially having the time of my life. I said thank you very much and he glared at me like I was the anti-Christ.

“SSSsssssssservisssssseeee is not incluuuuuuuddddded” He spat out.

My face turned a shade of pink and I guilt fell on me from what seemed like a fair height. I stuttered and apologised and ran into the bathroom with my tail between my legs.

“Have you got any change?” I asked Frenchy.

“No, why?” He replied.

“Because the guy says the service is not included”.

“I never get asked that here” He answered through a mass of soapsuds “I don’t have any change at all”.

I turned and made my way back to the room service fairy who was standing there as bold as brass and explained that we would pay him tomorrow, we had no change.

“Thissssss isssss the third time I have been up here toniiiiightttttteeee” and with that he turned on his heels swearing all the way and slammed the door behind him.

Shocked is not the word. Maybe I had taken advantage of room service, but whats a girl to do? When in Rome……

That aside, it was a brief but pleasant couple of days. We saw not much else of Prague apart from the following evening after work when the crew congregated at a beer house. We spent the evening pleasantly gluggling huge pints of czech beer, sampling huge sausages with mustard and chomping giant sized pretzels. I managed to snap a couple of shots of Prague on the way from where we were working to the beer house;

 

And because I am very very naughty, I ordered breakfast in our room again, in a room servicey kind of way on Sunday morning before we left to go home. It was a wonderful breakfast and the room service fairy did not deliver that morning. Instead a kind little lady wheeled a delightful trolley in with a good morning smile and left without slamming the door.

 

Room Service abuse.

You just can’t beat it!