Why I love working in Baltimore... - TravelPUNK Backpacker College Student Budget Travel Message Boards!

**juliagulia** · 06-28-2006, 08:36 PM

So, I live in the suburbs. It's basically the ultimate suburbian, planned town that sprawls all around and seems to have no end (a.k.a. Columbia). There's nothing insanely unique about this place, and you have your run of the mill Americans, with not that much variety in the different types of people you see.

Recently I started working at the Inner Harbor, a big tourist-y place in the heart of the nearest city, Baltimore. I never really realized WHY I wanted to work there so much until last week.

I get to meet SO many different people when I work there. Last week we had a huuuuuge Baptist Convention (50,000 people from around the country). They called me in for a Thursday double, and I worked more in the morning than I usually do on a Saturday night!

It was hard, but I got to talk to so many people, and just hear THEIR reactions to a city I'm simply in love with, while also learning about where they're from as well. I met a couple from Ohio who just talked and talked about their little town and their grandchildren, and how being in the city was so different for them, especially because they got lost getting to the pavilion. It was strange, but listenning to them was just so... fulfilling.

There was also a Blind-Deaf convention going on at the same time, and I didn't think much of it until a deaf woman came to me and I had to answer her questions. Just being thrown into something unusual for me was so exciting.

I also met a Slovakian couple asking for directions (they had nothing to do with the conventions). I wasn't able to help them, but they stayed for five minutes to talk about their homeland, and I even hooked them up with one of our waitresses who's also Slovakian, and apparantly they went partying a few days later.

It's even better with this Student Work program we have, where we got 30 students from Eastern Europe working here until September. I've already made friends with Igor from Croatia and Laszlo from Hungary (where they speak Hungarian... not German

).

Even though we can only talk on our breaks and brief moments where we're not busy, the conversations are so amusing with them trying to find the right words, and me trying to find synonyms that are easier to understand...

The next day, both conventions were ending, so we were really slow, and I realized that that's why I love working in a city--everyday there's different people, from different places, with different ideas and ways of life.

I may not be able to get out and travel on my own, but twice a week on Fridays and Saturdays, I get brief and sundry tastes of the different cultures out there.

And to fulfull my addiction, I get paid.