It’s OK to Travel with a Bathrobe #3: Talking About New Experiences – Turkey

Talking About New Experiences

Always searching for something new to learn and here I was, serving drinks behind a bar for the first time in my life. My bar was the prettiest, the Marina Yacht Club, an outdoor terrace, looking at the boats and the beautiful Bodrum Castle. Of course, the clients were all the people related to the marina, a good bunch.

I’d wanted to give it a go for a long time, but it seemed to be one of those jobs that you do when you are barely old enough to drink. Back then, I couldn’t even confess I was trying the devil’s water, let alone making a living out of it.

The Yacht Club was still getting ready, it was June. I had a fifteen minute interview, a zero minute training session and next thing I knew I was in the spotlight of the Grand Opening Cocktail Party. My baptism of fire, three hundred people drinking for free at the same time. And I was on the wrong side of the bar…

Anyway, I mastered the beer tap, learned the secrets of the shaker and, above all, served hundreds of gallons of Raki (without the dot), the Turkish national drink, something like Pastis in France, aniseed mixed with water. I spent three months laughing loudly like a good Spaniard, breaking all shapes of glasses and working more hours than I had thought I would. I realised there were not many barmaids in town apart from me and two or three others, that was different. I also observed the strict hierarchy at work and I enjoyed having to learn Turkish because every time I asked my colleague for the tray I was getting the fridge key and I hated that stupid look on my face when the customers were speed-asking me something. “Ah, you look so Turkish, I didn’t realize…”

But I did fine. I managed to make friends amongst the regular customers of the Marina who soon lost that status and became good friends. I learned to sail and saw a lot of Bodrum that I wouldn’t have seen without them, and without that job. And then, there was the singing…

A couple of people will laugh if they get to read this because I was married to the microphone. It took me a while to get started but then they had to throw me out with hot water. The bar started having live music, first during the weekends, then everyday, and I started singing some Spanish songs with a two-person band. Blushed and shy, they had to call me several times to come from behind the bar and I had to swallow hard…I liked it but I feared the moment to go out like a one-armed, blind gladiator.

After a while I was singing with whomever had a microphone turned on. I loved it, that stage feeling, I was superglue stuck to the band. My friend Melanie and I used to clean the bar at night after closing, and leave the music equipment until the end so we could stay when nobody was there and sing like superstars… Ain’t that sad? So, talking about new experiences, this was one I could have never thought about…the one I try not to talk about except with my very close friends.

So there you go, you can always learn something new and, if you try hard, you can even change your destiny. I didn’t want to, but I’m sure, with a bit of rehearsal…

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