today i applied for five different live-in hotel positions scattered throughout the scottish highlands:
one in inverness, which is the city on the edge of loch ness
one on the ‘road to skye’ (it really is a road, but it’s also the name for the region), which is the westward stretch of highlands before you reach the ocean and the islands (one of which is the isle of skye that gives the road it’s name)
and a few more scattered throughout the western and southern highlands.

i will probably be able to describe the differences in their locations better once i have been out in the region.  that’s how that stuff always seems to work.  sometimes i say to myself that travel is a way of making the rest of the world real.  until we go somewhere, no matter how much we read about it or see it on tv, we might as well just be making it up.

anyway, a few of the positions could last for several months, but for the most part the live-in season ends in mid october, when the bulk of the tourists leave.  i decided that it is worth it to try to get a job for the remainder of the season because i really want to spend some time exploring the “highlands and islands” (as the countryside is referred to), and getting a hotel job sounds like a good way to do it.  hotel jobs are better for saving money than restaurant/bar jobs because they often include food and/or lodging, and because the countryside is less expensive than the city.

it was a tough call because the room in matthew’s house is a very good find, but it will only be available through mid-october because a new lease will start then and they will be looking for someone for the whole year, so i would most likely have to look for somewhere new then anyway, and it seems worth the risk of losing it in order to investigate the highland option.  i can always just stay at the hostel here if i decide to stay and find nothing else.  they have long-term rates that rival most flatshares, and while there are downsides to sharing rooms and bathrooms for long periods of time, there are upsides as well.  in just the last few days, i have had conversations of some length with people from ireland, england, spain, portugal, australia, and korea, and short encounters with several more.  the hostel has a tradition of a free communal dinner on sunday nights, so we had spaghetti and i hung out in the dining room for a while with people playing ping pong.  it’s nice.
the irish girls and i (there were three of them in my room) went out on saturday night, and that was quite a story…  but it should be another post.

hopefully, i will hear back from at least one of the hotels in the next few days, so i will know how good the odds are of getting one of those jobs, and i can start dropping CVs (they call all resumes CVs in europe, not just academic ones) around edinburgh soon if it seems wise.  as it turns out, right now is an awesome time to be looking for work in edinburgh because all of the summer help is leaving, so it honestly seems like every restaurant or pub that i pass has a ‘help wanted’ sign up.  today i dropped by the BUNAC office to check in and use their printer and free internet connection, and a young woman from france passed through.  she is getting ready to leave, and told me that they are losing 5 of the 8 waitresses at the restaurant where she works, which is right in the heart of town.  she says it’s a great place, and i also found a listing for a waitress at the malt whisky society (which sounds educational), so those are going to be my first two options if the hotels fall through, and i am not feeling very worried about finding something if push comes to shove.

so that is a relief.

hopefully, even if i get a hotel job that only lasts until october, it will still be pretty easy to find work in edinburgh, so i can come back if i want.  the BUNAC receptionist said that it doesn’t get very busy again until january, when the students arrive who get their visas right at the end of the six-months-after-being-in-school window.
so apart from the fact that it is going to be dark and cold and rather dreary soon (in edinburgh it apparently gets dark before 4 in the winter, and if i head north, it will be even earlier), it seems like a good time to be working.
another perk of the hotel job would be that it will be a good addition to my resume if i decide to go looking for work in other countries in europe later on.  there are exciting chances to work in ski or beach towns during those respective seasons, but experience is a big help, so…

no more talk of plans for now.
we’ll see what the next few days bring as far as replies are concerned.
now i’ll read a bit, and go to bed.

if you want to see the reworked-for-positions-for-which-i-am-overeducated version of my resume, knock yourself out.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 28th, 2006 at 5:38 pm and is filed under travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.