Trysil, Thailand or Tirol – or maybe Turkey?

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Sometimes the world is too crazy!

A day in November we were almost giving up and had lost faith in finding seasonal work for the winter (so we can make money to travel) – after all, it was soon the start of the season – and two days later we stood with three dream scenarios in our hands, and had to choose from the following:

  1. Trysil: A job for Mette as a massege therapist in the pool- and wellness department at a Norwegian luxury hotel, for a high salary, that we can travel and live for a long time after the skiing season has ended and with the bonus that we could ski in one of Norway’s best and largest ski areas in our spare time! However, there was no promise for a job for Morten, but hopefully we could find something for him at the same hotel or at least in the same area, if only we drove up there.
  2. Thailand: Work to entertain Scandinavian guests at a 5-star resort in Phuket for 6 months: eg. with beach volleyball, vandaerobic, children’s theater, etc. We live for free at the same hotel and drinks and all meals are included. The same is health insurance, as well as the flight ticket out and home – and if we, for example, will stay for an extra month, they’ll just change our returndate for us so we can travel around Thailand and Asia as we want to!
  3. Tirol: Work as Hausmeister and Hausfrau in a small guesthouse in the middle of the Austrian Alps for 4 months, with free lift passes to one of Austria’s largest and most attractive ski areas throughout the period (300m from the door). A weekly cleaning of 9 rooms, shopping and breakfast service and the enjoyment of the guests are the biggest tasks. When the guests have eaten breakfast, we can ski for the rest of the day, or spend time at home in our little guesthouse!Before you read on, you might just consider … what would you have chosen in this situation? And why?
Winter in Tirol

Like most of you – who follow us on our facebook page at least – know, we chose the job as Hausmeister and Hausfrau in Tirol.

And why did we do that?
Because we were completely over-excited when we saw this job post and immediately felt that this was the job for us.
We have been talking for a long time about, how nice it would be to have our own bed & breakfast and just go and service the guests who went on holiday at our place. Perhaps I (Mette) could also, at the same time, have my psychotherapist practice at one end of the house – if it could be called a house. Cause some of the places we’ve fallen in love with, might not be called houses.

First of all, there has been a castle on our minds – Visborggaard Castle at Hadsund in Northern Jutland, which became part of a larger project where we together with a bunch of other enthusiastic young people began to make plans to buy it and transform it to a living community – where Morten and I started to make small plans to make a smaller bed & breakfast in the corresponding Millhouse.
And that’s not it with mills – since then it has been mostly old windmills, we have looked at and have fallen in love with. Everything from mills in Djursland to Gedser we have seen and thought “Wauw, what a beautiful and idyllic mill – this could be the perfect place to live and run a bed & breakfast!”

The reason why it has just been these mills we have fallen in love with, is partly because they are unique homes – there is only one of their kind. Just like there’s only one of us and one of Turtle! We like things that are unique – instead of all things, people or houses look like each other. Unique is good!
And in addition, mills are also homes with souls. They are charming and they tell a story.
Similarly, we had it with ‘Pension Klausnerhof’, which the guest house we should drive in Tirol is called; It was a unique residence, which had a soul and told a story – without a doubt, we would love it here.
And at the same time, while staying here, we could also try out our dream with a bed & breakfast and serve a lot of happy people on holiday; it was almost too good to be true!

So we did not have a lot of thoughts about saying yes when the boss of the travel agency called us and offered us the job – there was no doubt in our minds – we should be Hasumeister and Hausfrau at a small guesthouse in the Austrian Alps! There was nothing we would rather do than this!

Not everything is as it seems

But as most of you also know, the story did not end, as we had hoped..

We came to Tirol, everything was good and we loved the place from the first glance – it was really love at first sight!
We were also happy about the city, the surroundings and for the people we were going to work with. So everything really seemed bright to us.

There was, however, óne stone in the shoe – óne obstacle; namely the cooperation with the travel company we were employed by.

The first weeks flew off. We worked hard from early morning to late evening, despite being told that it was an “easy task” we had said yes to.
The job postings, as we previously mentioned, primarily related to cleaning, groceryshopping and serving breakfast, and having fun with the guests, after which we were free to ski for the rest of the day.
The realities just looked differently and we suddenly saw ourselves working our asses off all day long.

A few weeks passed this way before we were told our boss, how busy we had been. He was surprices, as we had not told him before, so he just thought everything was going fine. But he thought everything would be better from here. So we believed in him – and were pleased that we had relieved our hearts and that he would help us. However, it did not take many days before we realized that the communication between him and us started going wrong – and just a week after we had been asking for help by telling him about the situation, he…fired us!

We couldn’t believe it! We didn’t understand how he could treat us this way. We felt so unfairly treated! We had worked and worked to get the place up running for 14 days and when we expressed our frustrations about spending much more time and energy at the work than we were hired to, he threw us out on our asses and elbows – without a single warning. I even tried to talk to him and ask if he would give us an other chance, because we were just getting everything clear and we were sure that we could do the job – but no. He did not believe in us and didn’t mean, we were the right place. So there was nothing to do.

Over the next couple of days we packed our things from Pension Klausnerhof back in Turtle (while I was crying) and once again went back on the roads.
This time not with the bright, curious mindset that normally follows us when we travel in Turtle. This time, our departure was affected by tears, frustration, relief, sadness, disappointment and a strong sense of being treated unfairly.

We have spent some days licking the wounds. While we have been skiing on both alpineskies and cross-country skies – to get something out of our ski passes and ski loan, as we had been promised in the first place.

Now we have handed our lift passes on to the new host couple who took overthe place after us and so our adventure in Tirol is over for this time – with a totally different outcome than we had expected.

NEXT STOP; TURKEY?

In the midst of our talks of where in the world we should go from here, a memory appeared in one of us; Shortly before we left Denmark, one of the listeners to one of our talks, came up to us with her business card and said that if we were ever in Turkey, she had a house, we could borrow there for free.

Never has Turkey seemed closer to Tirol than just at this moment. Now that the dream job in Tirol didn’t seem to live up to the expectations we had – and we have said no thanks to both Trysil and Thailand, why not say yes, when we’re offered a free house in Turkey?

Now the whole world suddenly lays open in front of our feets again..

/Mette.

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