I work when others are on vacation

Back in tourism! I dedicated all my vacations to it – from the end of elementary school to graduation and my first full-time job. I started with the "basics" – I cleaned toilets, made beds, dusted and vacuumed floors in private rooms. I wasn’t poking around, but I couldn't resist admiring beautiful perfume bottles, pots of fluffy face creams, silk pajamas and nightgowns and various "machines" for personal care that the guests brought along and were all strange to me as a young girl. My next step was to become a "tourist" myself: I spent my first salary wandering around Yugoslavia in a Yugo with my boyfriend.

The following summer, I tried my hand as a cooking assistant: I peeled potatoes, baked pancakes, polished cutlery ... I then worked in tourism for several summers. Among other things, I helped the Bohinj Tourist Association rent rooms and apartments in Bohinj and ran the reception of Camp Danica in Bohinjska Bistrica. With my earnings, I paid for my driving test, graduation trip, annual tickets, and indulged in various treats. So it makes sense that I decided to study tourism, doesn’t it?

At that time, the only school for tourism was in Maribor (terribly far away for a Bohinj girl). So I went there, but after finishing my first year, when it was time to decide "tourism – yes or no", a dooming thought came over me: "Are you going to work during vacation seasons all your life?" So I enrolled the study of "Banking and Finance". Those who knew me were genuinely perplexed: Lidija – and the finances? However, I went on and finished my studies – which came in handy in my professional career – and then I went to the Ljubljana Faculty of Social Sciences, closer to my home, to study communication science.

After finishing my studies, I worked in marketing and book publishing for almost two decades, and spent my vacation time, summer or winter, with my family in tourist destinations at home or abroad. During tourist season, tourist workers work around the clock. I was always aware that after our departure, someone would come to clean the floor, pick up towels and bed linen, wash the bathroom and disinfect the toilet ... So I never left the room without taking out the trash, making the bed, separating the used towels from the clean ones, and besides, I always tipped tourist workers who I thought of as the ones doing their job ardently and with empathy for the guests.

While I was studying, my parents built a big house: my brother and I were supposed to live each on their own floor, and there was room left for whoever would need it. But things didn’t turn out as planned, and the parents lived alone in the house. They arranged apartments in it and rented them out to friends, their most loyal guests, and my family and I also came there to pamper ourselves every summer.

Then, the time came for my parents to bow out of the business, and since the situation in book publishing was getting worse by each year, I decided to return to my first love – tourism. My husband and sons and I rolled up our sleeves, renovated the apartments, and in the summer of 2019, we started welcoming our first guests. So now I work when others are on vacation. With pleasure!

Lidija