The annoying thing about not being able to blog very often is that by the time you do, the big news you have to tell is usually a bit stale and you've forgotten half the details. Still, I'll give it my best shot.
A couple of weeks ago, shortly after I wrote my last proper blog post in fact, we found ourselves staying at the vineyard we'd been picking at, the one with the manager called Atilla. We'd seen that they had a loo and a shower, as well as the kitchen we'd all been using for lunch, so we asked if it were possible to park our van there, just for the night and the German girls we were working with asked the same thing. Atilla said it was fine with him, but that we should check with the owner, Andy, who was also picking with us. I asked Andy, and he said he didn't have a problem with it as long as Atilla thought it would be fine. We went back to Atilla to double check and he said we were welcome to. He said that there was a French couple who worked on the vineyard and lived there, but that they were away on holiday with their parents. They were due back to work the next day however, so he assumed they'd be back at some point, but thought it would be fine. The German girls, Simone and Marie, went to the supermarket and bought us a feast - schnizel, potatoes and veggies - since we had a proper kitchen to use for once! So come 8.30pm, we were all in the kitchen preparing the food with plans to sit and watch a dvd on my laptop afterwards, when the French couple arrived back.
They walked into the kitchen and looked at us with shock. We all smiled and said hello - they did not return the smiles or the greetings - and I immediately explained that we'd been working there that day and were only staying for the one night. They asked us who had said we could stay and we said that Atilla and Andy had both agreed to it. They muttered a few words together in French (which I couldn't hear) and walked out, only to come back in looking confused and sour-faced a few minutes later. They asked, in very broken English, how long we'd be preparing food. We said we'd be done in around 20 minutes. They left again. We all sat around looking at each other, saying 'ooh, they don't seem to like us much do they?!' and decided that since the owner and manager had agreed to us being there, we had done nothing wrong and refused to feel bad about it. We finished making our food and sat at the table to eat. As we were just finishing, we were suddenly startled by the appearance of an older gentlemen - who I took to be the father of one of the French couple - at the window ,who immediately began screaming "SCHNELL SCHNELL! WE ARE WAITING FOR YOU!" And when I say screaming, I mean SCREAMING. We were all so shocked we had no idea what to do. At first, I'll admit, I thought it was a joke, but it quickly became apparent that it was not. He burst into the kitchen and carried on his tirade, in extremely broken English and German, shouting that this was their HOME and that we must LEAVE and so on, before he ran out again. A minute or so later, he returned with his wife and the French couple.
Now, I'm no longer a youngster, like the people I was with, and I will not tolerate that kind of behaviour towards me, particularly when it is completely unwarranted. I stood up and began to explain, calmly, that we were entitled to be there and that we had assumed that they were waiting for us to finish using the hob, so they could begin cooking their food, not that they were waiting for us to vacate the kitchen entirely. The older man began screaming again and...well I'll save you the verbal tennis* but it descended somewhat into a shouting match. From our side, however, the German girls remained silent and Isaac and I only raised our voices to be heard over the increasingly hysterical French contingent. The couple appeared to be trying to be fairly reasonable, the woman did say that it was not our fault and I agreed, saying that I thought that the behaviour of her father was completely unacceptable seeing as how we had done nothing wrong. When the father began screaming again - boy he liked to scream! - I turned to him with as fierce a look as I could muster and said 'YOU must stop speaking now as you are being very rude indeed!' He blustered for a moment and said "Why should I?" to which Isaac countered "Because you are ESCALATING this situation". He paused and turned to me, saying "You will not afraid me!" I fixed him with a furious glare and said "You will not afraid me either". For the rest of the conversation, when he tried to butt in, Isaac gave him the 'YOU. SHUT IT' signals with his hands, and the man did what he was told. Ha ha.
Eventually it was agreed that the French couple would take it up with Atilla and Andy in the morning - they were under the obviously erroneous impression that the facilities were theirs and theirs alone to use and were horrified that all the workers had been using 'their' kitchen at lunchtime. They said that they'd been there for three months- I said "So, in the last three months, no one else has stayed here?" No, they said, to which I replied "Well lucky you then, you only get us for one night!" They failed to see the funny side. Simone, Marie, Isaac and I decided we wanted no more to do with it, so (having already had our showers and eaten our food) we left, slightly afraid for what the crazy older man might do to us in the middle of the night if we did not...
*okay, it being a couple of weeks ago, I can't remember it word for word
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