We arrived at Casale Santa Brigida Guesthouse on Sept. 13 for a week of volunteering that turned out to be quite frustrating at times. However, having a slightly bad volunteer experience was helpful to our b&b training. We learned how NOT to run a b&b.
The Good:
Casale Santa Brigida was in a beautiful part of Italy - the "green heart" of the country. The guesthouse was in the remote village of Calvi dell Umbria. The landscape was a welcome change from the hot, dry atmosphere of Tuscany and Cinque Terre. It was forested and hilly with amazing views. The most interesting fact we learned about the area was that it was C.S. Lewis' inspiration for Narnia! He based his ficticious land on the ancient Roman village of Narni that was 15 miles from us. It really did look like his version of Narnia, especially the castle ruins.
Furthermore, the guesthouse was a beautiful property. It had a rustic look, but had six well-appointed suites with kitchenettes and a restaurant. Also, we learned about their perma-culture garden. By this point, we decided that we MUST have a garden at our b&b. It's so nice to serve guests fresh tomatoes or jams made with fruit from the garden.
Lastly, we had fun with the other three volunteers - all from different countries. Judith was from Holland, Renu from Canada and Re'ut from Israel. We had a potluck one night and each cooked something from our countries. I liked Re'ut's Israeli dish, Shakshooka... kind of like ratatouille with an egg cooked on top. But honestly, Brent's potato tacos were the biggest hit. Imagine how hard it was to shop for taco stuff in an Italian village grocery store! Luckily, we have a fantastic flour taco shell recipe.
The Bad:
#1 - There were no guests: which meant that we did a lot of small, menial maintenance jobs like tying ribbons on used hand soaps (kinda unsanitary, right?) and organizing closets
#2 - They nickel and dimed us: they didn't tell us that they'd charge 15 euros to pick us up from the train station. That's a lot of money! Also, they asked us to buy our own food and cook ourselves, which was fine, but it was frustrating when they tried to charge me for a cup of coffee, laundry (even though they had us getting dirty daily) and even for a few tomatoes from their garden. They made it clear how broke they were because they are artists trying to finance an off-site art facility
By the end, we'd learned ways that we would better take care of guests and any volunteers we ever have on our property. Here are photos: http://melissabarto.shutterfly.com.
No comments:
Post a Comment