Another month over!

Friday July 31st 2015
Yes, another month is over! And I’ve been working for almost 2 weeks now, man it feels like I haven’t been on vacation at all!
I’m sitting at the restaurant of the library today and I’m thinking of a story that I had forgotten to tell you earlier!
The first Sunday after coming back to work again, I was off in the afternoon and went to this restaurant also. It’s become my hangout in Amsterdam basically! Anyway, in this restaurant you’re supposed to bring your tray back to a place where they can wash it. Now not everyone knows and the sign hanging from the ceiling isn’t very noticeable. Plus it is not in English, which I think is a bit strange, seeing that Amsterdam is full of tourists.
On this particular day it was really very busy and with many people not knowing what to do with their plates and trays when their done, they leave it on the tables. Now the homeless people in Amsterdam have already found out, I saw one guy take a bowl from a table and then there was a lady who actually went to 4 different tables where she took whatever was left and ate it all.
There were two ladies from the US or Canada who were very entertained by all this, they even took a picture of her eating at one of the tables…Ok I was laughing about it, but actually I think it’s a pretty sad thing to see…
On the other hand it’s a good thing, this way the food doesn’t get thrown away, it’s put to good use!
Today I’m back at the library, hoping it would be quiet and it was! We’ve got the Gay Pride days in Amsterdam and all the activities are in the centre of the city. The library is about 10 minutes from the trainstation, so pretty much out of the range of activities, which was great, because now I had my hangout almost completely to myself!!!
Wednesday, August 5th 2015
I had a pretty rough week last week, can’t tell exactly where it came from, but things were not going as smoothly as they should’ve.
For instance we have adapters we can have guests borrow from us for the week so they can charge their phones and cameras. Of course there are a lot of people who don’t bring anything like this…at the beginning of the season we had a whole box full of them, now we only had like 5 or 6 of them left!!!!
Yes we write it down and tell them to bring them back at the end of the week, but some people go on to another ship in Europe and it is of course easier to just bring one, instead of asking for one at the other ship.
Then there was the crew show again, where again I was trying to get everyone to participate, but again I didn’t manage this. Now these aren’t major problems, but I’ve managed to find solutions for them, but for some reason it was harder to see through this dark cloud, so to speak.
I’ve ordered new adapters, we’ve put stickers on them and we’ve made a new borrow list, where people sign when they take one and sign again when they hand it back in on Friday. We also put a reminder on our powerpoint and they cruise director also puts it in her daily newsletter and she will remind people in her final talk on Thursdays…so this should work!
We may even have to charge a deposit, but that seems even “harsher” then this, but I would like to still have all the adapters when we close the ship in November!
And for the crew show I told the HM that I would only host the show when I work until 9pm, the show is at 9:15pm, so then I’m here anyway and I can do it. Which means I will still do it two nights a month and that’s more then enough for me! I mean I have been trying since before the beginning of the season to either get everyone involved or to have an extra compensation for the crew that is actually performing, but nothing has come of it, I feel like I’m banging my head against a wall and I’m done with it! So now the HM can take over on the other two nights!
So that has all been solved, the dark cloud is gone and it’s back to business again!
Last Saturday we said goodbye to one group and cruise director and hello to a new group and a new cruise director, she’s also from the Netherlands. I’m sorry to see Hendrik-Jan go, because it was really nice and easy to work with him. I had asked him how he think those past two weeks went and he said it was great, the only thing that was wrong was that this wasn’t the place for me!! Haha
We have 123 guests on board now and I had already scored a point with one of them, when he came to me to change a 100 euro note into smaller ones, when I took out a pair of scissors and asked him how he wanted it! He said it was funny, he travelled a number of miles to find a comedian on this ship. His friends said I just actually had to do it. But I’m still Dutch and wouldn’t go that far when it comes to money!!
Unfortunately there was also a problem…the couple in # 201 heard a gurgling noise coming from the airconditioning, so I went there to check and it was really loud. So I called the engineer to take a look at it and he said it wasn’t the ac. So I explained to them that it was the public toilet next to their room, which is the only one where the water goes out directly (the rest is a vacuum system) where the water comes in to the pipe because of the water level. All was good, but the noise woke them up in the night, the engineer was called again, but didn’t do all that much, so the next morning they were not happy!
I had already informed the cruise director and the HM about this, so when they came up to the desk I asked the HM to talk to them….let’s just say it didn’t go very well…she was screaming that it was unacceptable and that she wanted to leave…the HM told her that the engineer was going to look into it to have it fixed.
Now I completely understand. I mean I wake up from all manner of noises, but to have someone scream at you like that still upsets me. And I’m not very good at getting the message across that I do want to help them. That’s why I talked to the HM, thinking that he would do a better job, but I don’t think he did. It looked like he was stumbling just like I was.
Anyway, our engineer is also an asshole, because he said it wasn’t he ac, when in fact it turned out to be just that! There was too much air in the ac, so when they let that out, the noise was gone!
I’m glad the problem was solved eventually, but I don’t think she liked me very much. Sunday I was upset with it the whole day, trying to explain things to her, but the more you try to say the more you hang yourself basically because they’ll use it against you.
OK, one more thing to master! And this is a good place to learn this!
Friday August 7th 2015
So this week is almost over, glad that lady is leaving tomorrow and that we’ll get a new group.
So this week we also had to do our inventory for July…another thing I can’t seem to get right…Ok, counting the stuff I can do, but for some reason it never adds up. This time we were missing postcards. These are in a super ugly stand upon the front desk. So I decided to take the stand off of the desk from 9pm to 7 am the next morning, we’ve made better price tags and we haven’t put more than 10 pieces per city in it. So we hope this helps and that this month will be a good one!
I’m not very pleased with this I can tell you right now! Things that I’m supposed to be good at, are not going well at all. Not everything is going badly, fortunately a lot of what I do is still going very well and I can still find solutions for everything, but still. This afternoon I decided that this is going to be a year in which I’m learning new things and will get better at the things that aren’t going very well at the moment. So if I’m still working here next season, than things will be going great!
I have to tell you that I’m kind of backing down with my praise for the HM. When I met him in Cologne before the season, I was really very happy and thought that I would be able to learn a lot from him. Almost 5 months into the season I’m thinking he’s not as great as I thought him in the beginning.
I have the feeling he’s not working/doing as he said he would do..
O well, maybe that is what I’m supposed to learn now also, how not to do things and how not to deal with people!
Meanwhile, it’s another week before Terez goes off on vacation and I will have the cabin all to myself!!! Really looking forward to that!! No more climbing into bed and realize you have forgotten something and have to climb back out to get it. No more being hot, because you’re roommate can’t sleep when it’s cold in the room, not realizing that heat goes up and I’m choking in the bed upstairs! No more having to be careful dressing up because you’re roommate is asleep!! Well, only for two weeks anyway!!
Time certainly does fly! With this week it’s only 13 more cruises, before I know it I’ll be on my way to Australia! Planning my trip right now!
At least I hope we will be able to continue cruising, the water level is pretty low at the moment. Can you believe it, while during May it was too high to go anywhere! It has been very hot the last couple of weeks and there’s hardly been any rain, so the water level has dropped. We will be able to make it back to Amsterdam this week, but we don’t know if we are going to be able to go back to Basel the week after. So we’ll just have to keep our fingers crossed, otherwise we’ll have to swap guests again like we did in May!
We had a crazy thing last Wednesday! We always dock in Nierstein to get people on a bus to go to Heidelberg for an excursion. This time there were divers near the docking place and then the police came to tell us they’ve found granates from WWII near the place! Now that the water is so low it is easier to spot them I guess. But it would have been nice to know before we got there!

Love
Linda