Life as a hostess

When I was studying tourism - I know that sounds funny - I lived in Blankenberge and had to take the train to Bruges every day.  A short trip, less than 15 minutes.  But even then we played at cards for the short trip.  You were still allowed to smoke on trains back then, so we did that too.  Arriving in Bruges, I often noticed a couple of girls in navy blue uniforms waiting on the platform to catch the train to Zeebrugge.  They were hostesses working for a ferry company, but I didn't know that.  In winter they wore a cape.  I was only 17 and for some reason or other I loved the uniform and often saw myself wearing one.  That was a bit odd for me because I hardly ever wore a skirt or dress, jeans being the 'uniform' of the day. When a Lufthansa stewardess came for a talk about her work I was at first very disappointed to learn that I wasn't tall enough to qualify as a stewardess. So when I graduated and had to work at the ferry as a trainee for 2 months, I  was over the moon.  But to my grave disappointment, I didn't have to wear a uniform because I would not be working at the check in desk, but on the reservation department.  I still remember my first call with my boss to be.  I had to make an appointment with him to introduce myself and to learn what the job would be like and what would be expected of me.  At the end of the phone conversation he said : 'I will see you then, okidoki'.  I thought it very funny that my future boss used such a funny word "okidoki" and told everybody what a weird person he must be.  Rememeber this is 35 years ago when working relationships were a lot more formal than is the case now.  Fortunately for me, it was a very informal company.  All the staff on the passenger department were in their early twenties, like me, and some were married but none of them had children yet.  The Manager was just 10 years my senior and his assistant 6 years older than me.  I enjoyed my 2 months there very much and was a bit sad to have to leave.  I found a job doing secretarial work at the casino in Blankenberge.  Some people may think that would have been rather more glamourous, but it wasn't.   Blankenberge isn't Vegas by a far stretch, and my boss there was a 60 year old, very formal and very conservative frenchspeaking man.  The only thing good about the job was that I got to know some nice people and my closest colleague became a close friend.  7 months on, my trainee boss called with a job offer, again on the reservation department (still no uniform) and that was that.  I hoped to be in that uniform sooner or later anyway.  At the time the company did not only operate a ferry service from Zeebrugge and Rotterdam to Hull (Kingston upon Hull), but also a jetfoil, between Zeebrugge and London.  The Jetfoils were something special, new and exciting because they were built by Boeing and they sailed up the Thames and moored at Tower Bridge. The crossing took about 4 hours whereas you already needed the same amount of time for the normal ferry crossing from Zeebrugge to Dover alone and you still had a long  train ride from Dover to London.  Many people wanted to travel on the jetfoil instead of  travelling to London by plane.  The crew 'flying'  the jetfoils and the maintenance staff were american and we spent a lot of time with them.  The only disadvantage of this new exciting way of crossing the channel was that they often broke down and then we had to transfer the passengers to fly from Ostend on British Air Ferries, who were very happy with the business we gave them.  Now and again we also had some celebrity passengers like the now Sir Cliff Richard and Golden Earring.  They were exciting times and oftenwe joked about how we would tell our children and grandchildre all our funny stories, or even write a book, changing all the names.  Perhaps I could tell some of those "fairy tales' here.