My job is your idea of hell. I get sent to a school in some town in Austria I know nothing about. Work gives me some cash to get there, buying own train tickets, flights etc. I turn up on Sunday night at a hotel that work booked that I know nothing about, have a meeting with colleagues who may be people I know or completely new people.
We go to a school at 7am, full of teachers and kids you’ve never met, and then have to teach them for a week and get them to put on a show for their parents. Usually 3 different classes of kids who can be any age. So one week it might be teenagers the next 10 year olds.
Every school has slightly different lesson times, arrangement for photocopier, coffee etc. All meals are from local restaurants which sometimes have erratic opening hours. You like Austrian food right?
Sometimes teachers take you to their house, or a restaurant or arrange for their mate to give you a tour of Lower Austria’s Finest Bat and Stalactite cave. If it’s really small place sometimes the mayor insists on taking you round.
Even if you speak German, lots of these places have really thick regional dialects.
Come Saturday morning, you check out of the work hotel. The company gives you €60 hotel allowance and whatever money for a train ticket to stay somewhere en route to the next mystery school/hotel which is often at least 100 miles away and might even not be in Austria. Rinse and repeat for 2-5 weeks before you go home.
