checking out of the Sheraton

The checking out procedure wasn't as traumatic as I'd expected, just handing in my uniform, getting a couple of signatures. There may be irrelevant tax forms registered post from the Sheraton in the future. The complicated part was the finance. They couldn't pay me until the 30th so Paz is going to stay on till then and I will give her power of attorney at the bank to collect the money for me. She will also put it into traveller's cheques for me. I hate relying on other people to do things for me especially with finances.


I stole 2 bottles of champagne, 2 wine and some small whiskey, vodka and gin bottles to have with my friend from Israel. Sorry I didn't steal them I emancipated them from the mini-bar poor bottles were dying to escape, what could I do turn my back on their pleas for freedom? At least this way they know they'll be drunk and not left to sit on the shelf - like spinsters in a store room.

14 May 1991 - Heart attack in the Sheraton

On my last day in my last room Fiona, a fellow chambermaid came up behind me and gave me a fright. For the next 2 hours I experienced what I have had periodically since I was a child. I have always called it a heart attack although it is obviously not. I get dizzy, sweat, my heart beats very fast making my body shake slightly and it is hard to breath. I had this once in a dance class in University. When I was younger I remember getting milder versions of this when my breathing would get difficult and I would feel like there was a vice around my chest. I remember lying on my tummy on Lulu's couch in her lounge until it went away. So I want to have on the record that it happened on 14.5.91 - hope it doesn't happen again.

Still working in Munich

We had a freak move into our room. If you didn't know she was female you wouldn't have guessed. Big staring eyes, always wearing denim. Very ugly. Short hair, aggressive body language, shy - like a scared rabbit. The best bit is that we don't speak Italian, and she doesn't speak English. Great communication!

Our rucksacks were nearing there final form. they consisted of a sleeping bag, tent and small quantity of clothes, a small pack of toiletries, books etc. It snowed for two days solid, and was very cold. We had packed all our warm clothes up so we had to get it all out again. We are right under the Baverian Alps.

Got myself a nice tailored black skirt that the waiteresses wear in the hotel, will try to keep it and then get a nice top so I have a nice outfit to meet my Israeli friend in. Paz is scared shitless of traveling alone and that is why she decided to continue working, also because she will be making a little bit more money and doesn't want to feel like a gooseberry. She also doesn't get along with my friend from Israel. We decided to skip Prague as we just don't have enough time or money.

Future plans for switzerland and Berlin

Our future plans looked a little like this: We had gone to our boss and asked for 2 weeks worth of leave together which would be 4 days and she offered us 11 days. So from the 22 April until the 12nd May we would be free. We tried to get ourselves booked into the Zurich Sheraton but they are very small and full, so after one day of staying in bed we decided to set off the next day to Switzerland. The plan is to hitch there and then use our tent for the first time. We want to see all of Switzerland and then hitch halfway across Europe all the way to Berlin for the last couple of days. We actually tried going on the day we spent in bed, but after one ride from a man who dropped us off by the wrong off-ramp, we decided we were too exhausted, so bought bread, Bree and tuna and went to bed for the day.

Funny Irishmen

We have a lot of Irish people working here at the Sheraton and their accents just beg to be imitated. They also have the Irish deadpan obliviousness to their own humor. Two wee anecdotes about our Irish brethren. Peter who was doing his best to help us figure out why we had been given 11 days holiday. We managed to find explanations for most of the holiday days, then Peter says:"well if you resign you know you get your weekend plus an extra day off!" A lot of extra days off if you ask me. These extra days are called "good days". Then the other day James was telling us about a statue in Sendingertor in honor of the National Socialists (Hitler's old party). Also a marble statue with an eternal flame burning on top, which " wasn't lit on the day he went there".

Planning for future travels

Sent Easter packages off home, and the postage was 15Marks. I decided to cut down on writing home to save money as the postage in so expensive. I got a 30 Mark tip , not from working hard but from good luck, if fact we hardly see the guests. Paz's room is 39 and I was moved into it, it is much cleaner and cosy. I continue to wage war with lice. MY airfare which I deposited in the German Bank is not gaining interest as the German system doesn't give interest!! Got payed 833 Marks (about $830) and next month we should get 175 more as this month we had to pay a security deposit. Got another spoon of film developed. We really try to live on nothing and save every penny for travel. Unfortunately we couldn't get any other work in the hotel because of our German.

On our day off I sat munching crackers and Paz dyed her hair. At least hitch hiking doesn't cost petrol, but Paz says that it's not fun when it is so hard to survive here, we might as well not be her, as the $10 a day that we have to live on when we are on the road does not go very far.

Made plans to meet up with an Israeli boyfriend in Paris on 20Th May! I was very excited and hoping to be spoilt rotten! So there will be no point getting letters in Munich after the 25th April. After that our letters will collect in Paris up until 14Th May and then it's down to Pampolona for July 1st. All these moves will be very quick so it is hardly worth having the post chase us around Europe, that is why we are going to make our next "postal address" Poste Restante Paris.

A few notes home from Germany

Paz walked into Dr. Legal, the doctor who treated her for chicken pox, at the Sheraton. By chance he is the Doctor who comes to see the staff at the hotel 2x a week, and he also works with her insurance company. If the insurance find out she is working then the policy is null and void. So she is avoiding him when he comes for his hotel visits.

All my clothes were marked and stained , and I was tempted to throw them all away. With the Easter weekend came lots of chocolate. I got an Easter card from mom with $10 in it for buying Easter eggs, but as we had already taken care of the egg situation we kept the money as out last resort, emergency money. I got 2 other letters, one telling me that my gran is sick.

Eating pumpernickel and it's doing wonders to my system!

An evening at "Home"

Spent the next day in bed writing and then went to the post office after having not gone for two weeks. I got a huge card from an admirer in Israel plus a very heavy box. It contained toiletries in a basket with ribbons, Mozart chocolates, other chocolates, caramelized nuts and a bottle of Israeli "Simcha" wine. I was in shock. Although it is not what I would have picked for myself, the weight alone must have made the postage very expensive. I ploughed through the chocolates and used the bath stuff too.
We have an Irish girl called "Mary" staying in our room for a week while Ross, the other one, is away in Scotland. One night a pleasant enough guy who we knew came around and stayed too long, out staying is welcome. In the course of the evening he was systematically insulted by all three of us. I asked him if he spoke German, he said, why, I said, cos' I wanted to know if I said something to Paz in Afrikaans whether he would understand. Then Paz bluntly told him it was her bedtime and he had to leave. He didn't leave then Ross out of the blue said "You're a sarcastic git aren't ya". I couldn't believe my ears. "Why?" he asked. "Ya just are" she replied. I whispered to Ross, please say you didn't mean that. No, he said, she's Scottish, Scots always mean what they say. "Yes they do" she chirped in. Well he left in about 2 minutes, totally red faced. I shat on her and she said he had been winding us up all evening. Choosing not to get into details, I just ignored it, but couldn't get over the rudeness. The guy seemed very sensitive and I will apologize the next time I see him - if he doesn' t jump off a building first.

Leaving Frankfurt

We awoke in pitch darkness as the curtains were so good! We forced ourselves out of bed later than we had intended and went to breakfast. We found a newspaper hanging on our door! The breakfast was buffet - too much to describe. I had coffee, orange juice, a bowl of berries, kiwi fruit, muesli, yogurt, scrambled eggs, hash browns,sausages and then flapjacks and hot black cherries! We sat reading our free newspaper, then wobbled out of the dinning room and took one last look around before leaving a 4 mark tip with a note saying thank you to the chambermaid.

We went to check out and while everyone was paying we just handed in our keys - it had cost us nothing and normally would have cost about $500. We took all the fruit from our fruit bowl.

We bought tickets!!! and went into town. We wandered around and basically we had no more energy and just wanted to get home. Frankfurt is a dirty metropolis with tramps, prostitutes and people thrown all over the place. We got out of Frankfurt and headed for Wurzburg. a little town with a castle. On our way while getting rides with truck drivers, Paz and I both had trouble with truck drivers who "couldn't find the gear stick" if you know what I mean.

Photo by Roomman

Frankfurt, not a night out.

In the evening after our baths we dressed in black slinky dresses and went down to the lobby, but there was no where we could actually go without buying a drink. Even the complementary champagne we had in the bed room was listed on the menu as 8 Marks a glass. We asked after a night club which was in the airport. So after an awkward parade through the airport, with our heels clicking, we found the club closed, so headed back to the hotel. We walked around the hotel a bit and then returned to our room and sunk into our crisp white linen beds.

Back to Munich

We were on the road again. We have little signs saying where we want to go. The place you stand when hitching is very important. There are only three options, an on-ramp to the Autobahn, a gas station or an Autobahn rest stop. The rest stop is the best, as everyone is going in the right direction, and it is easy for them to stop. But you can't walk on the Autobahn to get to the rest stop, so an on ramp is always our first option and is a difficult place for them to stop. We were lucky and by 10pm we were home, back in Munich, and there was thick snow on the ground when we arrived!

We cursed the cold snap as we were on the verge of sending our cold clothes back home. We decided to lay some of our clothes down to rest instead of sending them home. Really our clothes by this stage were horrible - old, worn, dirty. I have 2 pairs of jeans I wear in rotation, 2 T-shirts, 2 sweaters and a dress. My extensive summer wardrobe consists of 2 pairs of shorts, 1 dress and a jump suit!

The next day was also free, so we spent it around the house, doing washing, and staying in bed.

Hitckhiking to Titisee

Our next ride was with a prosthetics nurse who took us to Titisee. It is a small town consisting of one road and a lake. The mist was settling over the forest-covered hills that surround the town. Black Forest trees tend to be very tightly packed with, with the leaves starting half way up the tall trees and mist filling the mysterious gaps between the trunks. The lake was glass and calm, like On Some Golden Pond. We looked through a touristy clock shop and had Black Forest cake in an Italian cafe. I was disappointed, I am sure the English version is better.

A mother and daughter art came in while we were there. The mother groomed, trim, hair sprayed, the daughter was too old, too fat, too ugly and too much bright blue eye shadow. She was being harassed by "Mummy" all the way. "What do you want dear?" "take your coat off dear", "sit down will you dear". The daughter should have left home when she was 30. "I will Mummy, give me a chance. I just want to visit the lady's".

Photo by Selcuk.aral

Hitchhiking in Germany

We had 3 days off in the last week of March and we decided to test drive hitchhiking and camping. So at 04:30 ( which turned out to be 03:30 because the alarm was wrong) we tip toed out with just a sleeping bag and a small day pack.We had to wait for the tube station to open, and then caught a tube to a stop near the Autobahn (highway) heading in the direction of the Black Forest. We had made a little sign and within minutes we were sitting in a car with a middle-aged man going to a small town near the Black Forest. I sat in front, but after a preliminary chat I handed the conversation over to Paz.

I kept drifting in and out of a book I was reading and a deep sleep while hearing snippets of the conversation. The man with no name was writing a book about depression because he had suffered several in his life, and after expounding on his totally unoriginal open ended thesis, which would drive any depressant to suicide, Paz asked him what caused his depressions. He paused then said:"Don't ask." And she didn't. Next we heard about a night he spent with a dope smoking homosexual who flaunted himself in front of our innocent driver in a hotel room. The driver of course did not indulge. We also were treated to several references to the physical anatomy, such as "women are more pron to depression because of their periods, but men, well men are just caught off guard." We tried to cut him off unsuccessfully until we succeeded by reaching our destination and we put the road between us and the man with no name, after 3 hours together.

Photo by The Sage of Shadowdale

The cleaners

Beware the Nova Cleaners! The hotel has about 14 chambermaids who do about 15 rooms each a day. They hire cleaners from an outside company to clean the remainder of rooms. These are the Nova Cleaners. They do about 30 rooms a day - not very well - God knows what they leave out. They are quiet, dark and mostly Afghans, Iraqis,Iranians or just plain Arabs. They have a reputation for trying to chat up the regular chambermaids and for leaving a mess behind them. They are talked about like a new race.

Charlie

There is a girl working here called "Charlie" and she has big black boots, a beautiful clean open face which sweeps away into brown fuzzy hair, quite long. She is from Folkstone, England and obviously a good home which she is trying desperately hard to get away from, by using a cockney accent. She slacks off work and leaves it up to everyone else.

A Typical Day Part2

The hotel keys are actually cards that slot into holes on the door. A green light opens the door and a red light means it is locked from the inside. These changed every time a new guest stayed in each room.

Anyway we go up in a service lift and on each floor there is an "office" which contains all the equipment and supplies for that floor. So we go in there and load up our trolleys which contain all our towels, laundry and bath stuff. We wheel out this monster which invariably is lopsided and crashes into the doors with the "do not disturb" signs on. Then we haul out the vacuum cleaner which is just for show - we never have time to use it. The other thing we wheel out is the dirty laundry trolley with bags hanging on it for us to put the used sheets in.

We knock on the door, say "housekeeping", and barge in. Then we strip the bed, re-do every bed, dust, replace things that have been used, clean the bathroom - yuck - playing with other peoples pubic hairs. We use very strong cleaning materials which burns holes in your hands. Then we move on.

Every room is checked by a "housdamen" who has a nicer uniform and tells us things we have "missed". We do 14 rooms a day, which means 30 minutes each room. It is a rush and we really catlick.

At the end of the day we reload the trolley, and clean the "office", then report downstairs, hand in our keys, strip off and go for a cup of tea. Also in the middle of the day there is our hot meal in the hotel canteen for 2 Marks.

We then trek home and collapse.

Photo by Chris 73, Wikimedia

A Typical Day part 1

A typical day:
5:45 a radio alarm blasts off, sending us like cannon balls from our beds. After donning some coverage and washing the sleep from our eyes, we trudge down the 5 flights of stairs in semi-light. The mornings are grey and cold. We walk to the Obesendling tube stop and catch the 06:20 U4 on the U-bahn. We change at Odeonsplatz to the U3 to Arabella Park. We read non-stop on the 40 minute journey. At our stop we emerge like Dr. Who into a different world. Towering above us as we glide up the steps of the underground, is the HypsHous - a bank which is silver and grey aluminium and glass. Very tall science fiction like building of 3 tubes and triangles.
We walk towards the great S in the sky (Sheraton) and enter at the same place as the frozen chickens. However unlike the chickens we have to click a little card into a machine. Then we bang through the grease covered doors to the canteen. An endless stream of caffeine and pumpernickel, and a good book settles me for the day.

07:30 we go to the locker-room where we have a locker and a uniform. Pale blue stripe sacks. Once in these, and now camouflaged completely so no one will suspect we are attractive in any way, we go to the housekeeping department and get a clipboard with a worksheet on it. It tells us which floor we will be working on and how many rooms we have won in the lucky draw. We also get a pass key for the floor (so that if anything is stolen we can get blamed).

Lazy days in Munich

I had just finished reading Lolita - brilliant writing - and then read Mile 18 by Leon Uris. Friday - our other day off, we lounged till noon then went out to investigate the price of different places, had lunch at the hotel then headed underground to see the Nymphonburg Castle (not Ludwig's) we could have had 50% discount on hiring a car from Avis so we considered it for weekend excursions. My biggest impression of Munich was the underground system, it is such a scramble of bright colors. We took photos to be developed, and then as it was raining we went to see a movie- a big extravagance."Three men and a little lady". After that we stumbled upon a synagogue and popped in for the service. I had bought little candles and lit one every Friday night, not for religious reasons, but just to mark off the weeks we are here.

However mundane it all seemed, I could find reams to say about it, but in a nutshell, the people are bland, the food is great, and we do 14 rooms a day.

Our day off in Munich

Went to Dachau on our day off - the ex-concentration camp and I really didn't find it very exciting. There are so many people who have lived to tell the tale, it is much more moving to see and speak to the survivors.

We have just had one of our 2 days off. First we lazed around and did our washing as we had been wearing the same cloths for 3 days!

Then we dolled ourselves up and went to what is supposed to be a really fancy are of town-Shewarbing. We found it had several interesting shops, but nothing outstanding. There is a cement area with chess boards tables and chairs and a playground. We bought yogurt and berry ice-cream and sat watching the chess players. I was in no mood to explore. One shop was small and consisted of bright coloured silks, hats and hair pieces - we tried everything on. Including a platinum blond wig.

The weather has been grey and wet so we just went home and eat chocolate and read books.

Photo by Rosarion

Conversations in the Sheraton canteen

Sheraton staff canteen - a large sunny room with chairs and tables in bright red and white. There is an array of wonderful food, and a few blobs of human flesh who collect their livelyhood here every month.

"Hi", the new comer lands the flying saucer on it's red checked resting place, and a few adventurous laps of hot tea escape overboard.
"Hi, you new then?"
"Yeh."
"Welcome, to the pits."
"Oh, we thought it's been great so far..."
"What do you think of the uniforms then? Bloody awful, sack of potatoes if you ask me, you'd think they'd have thought something else up." The old timer - about 5 months on the job - like most of the Sheraton staff, is Scottish, with a dialectical twang and a limited vocabulary.
"well actually the uniforms are a little unflattering."
"yeh, bloody right. Got ya self a drop of tea then did ya? It's terrible tea her, but the coffee's worse. What can you do hey?"
"Tea's tea, isn't it?"
"cold here, careful of the meat too, salmanella."
"What!" Shock, horror.
"The food, it's not too fresh, we get the left overs."
"At least it doesn't go to waste."
"Nothing goes to waste here. You at the staff house then?"
"Yes."
"what room number?"
"39"
"Oh hell, with Barbara, she's mental - no really she's a good laughis Barbara she is."
"When do they change the bedding?"
"Every two weeks - if you're lucky."
"What do you mean?"
"Well you have to be home to do it. SO if laundrey day isn't on your day off your fucked."
"Oh no!" Newby says, the muscles in her face slowly sliding downhill under the weight of knowledge, probably in the contract - small German print.
"Don't worry you can take bedding from the hotel."
"Great."
"Just don't get caught. They don't mind, so long as you don't get caught."
"Oh."
"And any road, they cannee check ya bag withoot a member of the union there and a policeman."
"Oh."
"Yeh, lots of people take stuff home - why not hey? I sent my folks two super Sheraton bathrobes - shmashing they was."
"Don't they notice the stuff missing?"
"Not really. The Sheraton's shampoo's good but give the conditioner a miss."
"What time do we finish work?"
"You're supposed to finish at 4pm, but if you finish early just come down her for a cuppa, what ever you do don't go near the housekeeper's office before 4pm or she'll give you more rooms to do."
"How do you manage to do 16 rooms a day>"
"Ya, just got to learn what to miss out, how to skim, and what each Housedamen looks for, like
Alan is a crome man, Marie is funny about hairs on the floor."
"The bath takes so long to do."
"Well just clean the ring and take the hairs out."
"Yuk, and I can't believe we are supposed to use the previous guest's facecloth."
"Oh, well I'll be off then, see you in a wee bit."
"Where can we get cold drinks?"
"From a machine in the hall, come on. I'll show you how to get one out without paying."