Service

It feels like I'm writing an awful lot, y'know. And part of me feels that I'm writing when I should be, well, on holiday. The thing is, for one, I'm a quick typist, and the second thing is I'm doing this when I'd probably only be reading anyway. In fact, I managed to go backwards on the book I'm reading the other day. Seriously. I'd last been reading it on the plane, when I was a little zonked out. I picked it up this morning to read, found my marked page, and realised that it was on an interesting bit about Uganda, but that I'd lost track. So, I turned back a couple of pages...then only managed to read half a page before I was distracted. So yes, I've literally gone backwards.

Soooo, as predicted, it was another 'down' day, and I hauled myself out of bed just after 10am to go get breakfast. Dex and I spent a subdued half an hour in the empty hotel bar/restaurant (I still haven't decided what the bloody-hell it is) laughing at the staff. Well, not so much at them as at their behaviour. Perhaps I should say something about the 'non service culture' I keep harping on about.

From my rudimentary knowledge of communism, everyone is allocated a job to do, and is then rewarded with enough money or other goods to live adequately and provide for any dependents. Communism is, of course, the absolute antithesis of Capitalism and, thus there is no faciliity whereby initiative or extra effort can be rewarded. So, to be blunt, why would anyone bother doing any more than the bare minimum required from them. Well, since I've never been here before, this is all conjecture, but I tend to think that this culture still exists – particularly in this far-flung corner of Mother Russia.

So, some examples, then: There are more bar and restaurant staff than necessary at the hotel. They keep running out of beer. Now, if you know that the hotel is going to be full of (mainly) hard-skiing blokes for a week, wouldn't you think they'd be keen on a beer or two? Even after you run out on the first night, wouldn't you rush through an order? But no, they don't. I'd imagine beer is supplied on one day of the week, and if they're out, tough. That's just the way it is. They have no interest in providing a decent service. They're missing out on some big profits, but there's no incentive for them to care. You never get a smile out of them, and they get extremely stroppy if you try and use a note over 500 rubles. Dex and I were laughing this morning at the woman who seems to be in charge at breakfast. She has an orange dye-job that makes her look a bit like the princess in Shrek (as the ogress), the place is dead, but somebody asks her for something, and she responds as if she's been asked to piggy-back the guy to his room. We were imagining her saying, 'You treat this place like a bloody hotel!'.

Another example: The restaurants not only keep running out of food, but they seem to have no ability to cater to groups of more than five. The food comes when it comes. Often it doesn't come at all. Sometimes it comes in reverse order. Again, there's no incentive to please the customers. The other night, it had taken an hour to get cold starters, and four were missing. I waved the waitress over and asked if the other four were on their way. I was very polite. She responded fairly aggressively that they take longer to prepare. Yes, but an hour? It's a salad!

I guess that one's more likely to go under 'interesting' rather than 'funny'.

Not much more to say about the day. We did a hot spring again... Oh! We dined in a medieval theme restaurant! Yes, built like a faux-castle, on a roadside, with gold-tinted windows and frescos of various medieval scenes on the walls inside. Food arrived in a random order. Pete, though, was particularly pleased, as he likes menus with photographs of the dishes.

Yes, we were served by a woman garbed as a 'wench'.

So, we've had some beers at the hotel, the others have gone to play pool, but I really need an early night – and I have everything crossed for good weather tomorrow. If we go up, it's going to be non-stop, and very hard workd. We did around seventeen thousand vertical metres in the two days we've been up, and we could have done a lot more. Wish us luck.