My Club Med Career page 3

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    Published by Dave Newnham & FiniteSite.com

    Last revised 05/04/03
    South Coast of Bermuda

    The Pink Hotel!
    		St Georges's Cove (April to September 1985)

    In Senegal, I was told that my first season as an "Aide Gestionnaire" would be the opening of Club Med's newest Resort on the Island of Bermuda. Flight with British Airways to Bermuda via Philadelphia, and managed not to get lost in the Bermuda Triangle! Club Med had taken over the old Lowes Hotel, perched on a hilltop in St.George's Cove on the eastern end of Bermuda. It was still a mess with less than three weeks to go before the opening. So the cheap labour had arrived, i.e. the GO's and we set about stripping up carpet and taking out the old furniture. On the Tennis Courts there were 56 Containers of new equipment, fixtures and fittings.

    The opening day approached and we just about made it and lo and behold the Bermudian Personnel went on strike... Party On. We managed to get afew Guests turn up who hadn't been able to be contacted and most elected to stay, so the strike fizzled out and the opening just sort of happened as arrivals dribbled in.

    The first GM through the door was a Brit, called Philip Black. He became a mate for a number of years and visited me often for mine and his birthday (always with a bottle of Tequila in hand).

    Despite the inauspicious start, this has to be rated as one of the best seasons I had in Club Med. Should have stopped after this one.... However as well as meeting up with a few GO's from the season in Eleuthera, as Amala Benaissa was again the Chef de Village, I met a whole new bunch of play mates. In next to no time struck up a great friendship with Louise Byrne from Brisbane (the reason I am now in Australia). Also great mates with "Jess", aka Dave from Sydney, Greg from California, Kathy & Kathy from Canada and Hershey USA, Barbara from New England, Monica from Brooklyn (who made wicked Long Island Iced Teas), Mehmet Aricioglu from Turkey (who had 36 pairs of shoes!), Sylvie from France, Barbara Piekar from France, Cheryl from Chicago, Gilles from France, Katrina from Scottsdale, Robert from Montreal, Milly from Colorado and many others.Cathy and Pierre Ruffaldi were with Amal again as well as Christine Ducruez, "Caramel" Denis Amsellem, Freddy Leroux and the famous Mateo, the Choreographer. His shows had to be seen to be believed, and liberally sprinkled with Dark and Stormy's to perform, but you queued up to be in them. The end of the season came rather suddenly as Club Med or rather Gilbert Trigano, decided to close down early due to the cost of running the place. At the time we partied our arses off when the decision was made public. It had been a tough season but thoroughly enjoyable. After staying on for three weeks at the closure to do the end of season accounts, I had wangled a free trip to LA and back. So went to visit Phil in Malibu Canyon where the party just went on. Greg came up and stayed and a wild night was had by all. Flew back to New York and stayed with Dave at Monica's in Brooklyn, before flying down to Philadelphia for the flight home to the UK.

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    Turkoise, Providenciales (October 85 to May 1986)

    Back in the UK in time to catch my breath and back to Paris to go to Turkoise in the Turks and Caicos Islands. Flew from Paris to Miami, where I bumped into Greg who was going to Turks as well. I had only left him in Malibu a week before, so we just carried on the party and nearly missed the plane to Providenciales. This season ended up to be a Bermuda Revival as we ended up with so many from the previous season. Louise and Eric came, as well as Cheryl and Jo, Milly and Robert, Gilles and Mehmet and Catweazle (George from the Laundry). Luke Distelmans was the CdV and though difficult at times due to an amazingly bad sidekick (Gigi Chicheportiche), he was exceptional fun to work with due to his humour and stage presence. My Gestionnaire got married to Mehmet on the Island (Euro passport for Mehmet !!!!) just to add to the party atmosphere and we managed to survive Kate the Cyclone that ripped right through Providenciales. Only the liquor stores seemed to have bore the brunt, losing their roofs. All the Go's were moved out of our rooms to GM rooms with GM's. Everyone was given a box of matches, candle and a bottle of wine each. The Night passed in a windy alcoholic blur, as everyone tried to get into as few rooms as possible for a traditional cyclone party. The next day had plenty of cleaning up to do with a heck of a collective hangover. Ladders were found up the sides of the liquor stores as the islanders had helped themselves! Later in the season I was on my way to Cap Haiti with an excursion the day the Haitians decided to start a revolution to overthrow Papa Doc. Most upset to see it cancelled as we got to the Airport. Would have made the trip even more interesting. However Luc threw a massive party with the Personnel as we had about 30 Haitian staff in the resort.

    This was the season as well when Greg decided to move down to Saint Lucia to get back together with Kathy (Aerobics in Bermuda), and Louise announced to me that she was pregnant and would have to leave early with Eric. I was sent off to Bermuda again to do my stage Gestion, which I successfully passed. As Greg was getting married to Kathy in Saint Lucia, I told Luc that my stage had been extended for a week and merrily flew off with Doris Drescher to Saint Lucia, via Philadelphia, to Miami, where we missed our connection. American Airlines arranged us a different flight plan via an overnight in Antigua, and then the Island Hopper to Saint Lucia via Dominica. Quite a trip considering I was meant to back at work in Turks and the CdV in Saint Lucia (Berger) was a big mate of Luc's !!!

    Fun season, shame it had to end. However Paris informed me that my first season Gestionnaire was to be in Bulgaria, so I brushed up on my Marx and Lenin and off I flew.

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    Resort of Turkoise
    Aerial View of Providenciales and Grace Bay

    The black sand beach of Roussalka, on the Black Sea

    Roussalka Bar, scene of many parties and especially where we listened to the 86 World Cup on the Radio
    		Roussalka (June to September 1986)

    After Bermuda and Turkoise the good seasons just rolled on. Flight from Paris to Bucharest, where it came as a shock to see Tanks on alert at the Airport and machine gunned posts at every 50 metres around the Airport. Re-took off for Sofia, which immediately seemed a lot more at ease. The soldiers in the tanks were asleep! Had 5 hours to wait for the connecting flight so had a wander into town and immediately managed to change money on the black market. Small plane to Varna that reminded us all of a 2CV with it's bucket seats. North East Bulgaria (the Resort was on the Black Sea coast just south of the Romanian border) was very rural, few cars mainly horse drawn wagons, in a wheat belt area. Typical communist East European construction, concrete and posters and CP billboards every where. The village of Roussalka was quite quaint though old fashioned. Shock to see the electricity box in the shower! And very smelly as there were sulphur showers at the entrance to the village by the Offices. Strange set up int he village as well as everyone had their counterpart who worked for Balkan Tourist. I had a Bulgarian colleague Gestionnaire, as did the CdV, Cashier, Planning and Excursions. However they couldn't have known that Morre was the CdV and did more for Bulgarian/Belgian relations than any politico could have done. Morre (Maurice van Eyck) is a Belgian CdV of the old school, prone to partying at any moment, and fits of delire. "Lets have an election, as they don't have many in the country, and elect a new CdV from amongst the GM's". So we did, five day election campaign that ended up with the GM CdV taking over the village with a GM team while the GO team went off to the local village and spent the day partying in the local bars. Or when the bar receipts were a bit low so he decided to pretend that two GO's got married, not for real of course but only the Chief of Services knew. We persuded the GM's to donate bar beads to their wedding kitty, and a fine wedding party was had by all. We only told the GO's at the end of the season that it wasn't for real, however the two GO's were in couple and actually married a year later!

    Or when the Anderlect Football Team came on holiday (many were missing as the postcard from the Belgian National Team in Mexico for the World Cup stated "Sorry we couldn't be there with you Morre, but we didn't know we'd get so far" - Belgium qualified for the semi finals much to everyone's surprise including the Team). As we sang to them "Anderlecht au Zoo, Liberez les Animaux" (The Go Team were kitted out in RWD Molenbeek colours as our GO Uniform) Roussalka didn't know what had hit them. However we organised a football match with the locals in Varna and charged GM's for the Excursion. 8,000 spectators turned up as they thought it was the real Anderlecht Team. The mainly GO Team and Anderlecht Youth Team managed to win 3-1 much to everyone's relief at the deception.

    But the "Pièce de Resistance" was when we decided to attack Bellings the CdV in the neighbouring village of Thalassa. Not a problem you may think except that Thalassa was in Romania. Had to spend three weeks organising day visas for the GO's and day visas for up to100 GM's. However we succeeded and equipped with a Jazz Band, flour bombs and 300 rolls of soft toilet paper ( they all had sore arses in Thalassa due to the State paper that was as hard as sand paper!!!), we set off for the border. The border crossing didn't quite go to plan, as Morre had many mad Belgian mates, one of whom decided it would be fun to put flour on his hand and snort it in front of the Romanian border guards, and a mad Belgian friend who decided as she was dying for a piss (much beer on the bus of course), went off into no mans land to squat, only to be faced by two soldiers with a machine gun pointed at her arse!! We all had to be individually searched so the Jazz band climbed on to the top of the bus and gave an impromptu concert. Going South was an endless procession of trabbies as East Germans and Polish queued to get across the border for their summer holidays. It of course became one mass party, before finally getting the OK after 5 hours there, to proceed (minus many soft toilet rolls that oiled the passage!!). When we eventually got to the village past machine gun posts at every 500 metres, the CdV, oblivious of the attack, was asleep on the beach. He was summoned and challenged to a chug-a-lug, the loser having to shave his head (we had brought a long a GO hairdresser from East Berlin for the occasion). Morre won and kept his hair but not his pristine conditioned liver! The return was uneventful except most of the GM's in Thalassa wanted to escape with us as well. The border passage went very fast as we had become the best of friends with the border guards.......

    Oh, there were far too many memories to all put down here. Morre was amazing and also met here Armand Chaudhary an Anglo/Pakistani/French man and Michelle from New York who chug-a-lugged better than anyone and therefore I became madly besotted with. Michele was the Choreographer and we had fun with the shows. The accent was on Jazz, Brel and madness. We also did a version of "Cats" as well as "Les Pantoufles" (slippers). This was a show set in a mental asylum, with a wire mesh over the entire front of the stage to keep the loonies apart from the audience. I played the role of the searcher of slippers, the Finale being my playback "ou sont passés, dis-donc, mes pantoufles" (where on earth have me slippers gone), whereupon the cast descended on the public and threw the public's shoes over the fence at me. Never did know if the GM's ever got all their shoes back.

    What a season, fuelled by parties, alcohol and nights spent listening to, singing along with and crying to the songs of Jacques Brel. The end of season came too quickly. But it didn't finish there...... All season we had bought petrol, fish and cheese on the black market having smuggled in Lev (Bulgarian currency from Belgium). This saved us alot of money and gave variety to the diet as everything had to be bought via Balkan Tourism. However the Bulgarian authorities knew we had large amounts of Lev in stock and I was summoned to the Party Secretary in Varna to explain ourselves. Jail loomed plus confiscation of all the money. However I managed to prove that the local Human Resources Manager's daughter was very prone to buying goods in Lev from our Boutique (strictly forbidden under Bulgarian law, like buying from tourist shops, which was only in hard currency). After discussion on Marx and Lenin, I managed to pay our Electricity bill in Lev, and came away a free man with a bottle of Bulgarian cognac, still at me Mum's house as a souvenir of a close shave. Our Lev was smuggled in regularly via the Belgian charter in packets of duty free ciggies !!!! Now only problem was I had to smuggle the excess money back out from Bulgaria to Belgium.... Good old Velitchko, the Bulgarian Guide managed to get anything through customs and the security screening by liberal gifts of Russian Vodka and Scottish Whisky that I bought from Balkan Tourist with hard cash, and passed in a special account - VAT!!! - Tax Account - with Paris' blessing of course. Like the constant nicking of French lingerie from GM's balconies. Well nothing we can do about it it's like a tourist tax as such luxuries didn't exist in pre revolution Bulgaria. The GM's were always quite accepting.....

    One last fling however was the final party to be had in Brussels, as Molenbeek played at Anderlecht. I was not going to miss this as most of the GO Team, +/- 100 GM's and the Jazz band were to be there, only problem was that I hadn't finished my end of season. No matter, found a charter trip to Brussels and back and took part in the mad weekend in Brussels. Finished my end of season and drove back to Brussels , as Morre had left his car behind. He sacked his wife before realising that he couldn't drive, so came back with my German Transport GO, Ralf. Great trip, went across Bulgaria over the border to Yugoslavia and Belgrade before going to Hungary and Budapest where we diverted to Lake Balaton, before crossing to Austria and staying at the CityClub pyramid in Vienna, This was an amazing place, with an indoor and outdoor tropical swimming pool, 24hr access, and large FKK section with bar saunas and pool, FKK being Naturist. Then off via southern Germany to Brussels, where we delivered the car and I finished off the last bits of my end of season before handing it in to Paris.

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