The hotel provides breakfast and an evening meal in the form of a serve yourself buffet which is a damn sight better than the buf-FEH that we had in our American hotel last year. The food is excellent. This morning at breakfast, however, there seemed to be a problem. Normally you can stroll around fairly comfortably serving yourself but this morning the room was packed with people all jostling for position. There were queues for everything, cutlery was not available, one of the two coffee machines wasn’t working and neither was one of the two toast machines. Tempers are frayed and there are lots of hand gestures from waiters and guests alike. I’m watching it all with some amusement but I’ve decided to just go to where ever the queue is shortest and get whatever happens to be there for breakfast. That’s OK, a roll and buffer will do fine. Can’t get coffee though, too many people queuing. Never mind, not something to rant at a waiter about as some people are doing.
The one and only toast machine is working overtime. It consists of a conveyor belt which constantly feeds your slice of bread slowly along under a grill. You walk up, put your bread in at one end and wait for it to re-appear at the other end. There’s a sign which reads ‘Do Not Place Any Other Items In Toaster Except Bread’.
The Germans as always, ignore the sign and do exactly as they please. Hard boiled eggs, bread rolls and a couple of Jewish waiters all rolled tinder the grill while I was there. The Spaniards put their bread in at one end and were too busy jabbering away to notice it come out at the other end and fall off onto the floor and the Russians couldn’t understand how to use it but were constantly being given fluff-covered toast by the Spaniards, which they gratefully ate, fluff, grit and all.
I tried to make the Russians feel more at home over dinner tonight by putting a tea cozy on my head, wearing a false beard, baggy white shirt and a table cloth over one shoulder. I jumped up and down around the tables kicking my legs out in a jerky movement while singing that great Boney M hit “Rasputin”. (I was going to follow it up with a romantic smoochy number but thought I might look stupid).
A bit disappointed that they didn’t join in but I think they really enjoyed it in their own way.
The police said as much to me while sitting on my head in the back of the van anyway.
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