Hotel<\/a> Atrio<\/strong> near Calheta. The hotel is run by a French couple, very successful, very experienced. I was allowed to offer yoga there – and spontaneously got a second offer: a part-time job at reception. <\/p>\nAs many of the guests are German-speaking, the hotel was looking for someone who spoke German – and I was a perfect fit for the team. So I accepted. <\/p>\n
Suddenly a hotel employee<\/h2>\n
When I moved to Madeira, I started working in a hotel for 20 hours a week – for six months. I earned \u20ac390 net per month. Even though the current minimum wage in Madeira is around \u20ac915 gross for full-time work, this is very little overall – especially from a German perspective. The cost of living may be lower on the island, but for someone from Germany, this salary often doesn’t feel like a living wage. <\/p>\n
The last time I had worked in a hotel was when I was 21 – during my Work & Travel year in Australia, where I did housekeeping for several weeks. Now, around 20 years later, I’ve returned to a hotel – but with a completely different professional background: a degree, training, over 20 years of experience working with people – and my job as a yoga teacher. <\/p>\n
I not only learned a lot about the hotel industry, but also about myself. I helped with bookings, gave hiking and rental car tips and answered inquiries from tourists. And suddenly I was the person behind the counter – responsible for emails, phone calls and welcoming guests. <\/p>\n
Spotty writing and first Portuguese<\/h2>\n
Part of my job was to check and send off the kitchen orders for fruit, vegetables, dairy products – a lot of it was handwritten. I still remember how difficult it was to decipher the spidery writing. I simply couldn’t decipher many terms, especially if you had never heard the words before or if abbreviations were used. – But I liked this way of learning. Jumping in at the deep end and just doing it. <\/p>\n
Over time, I understood more, dared to speak and realized how much this everyday life helped me to connect with the language and the culture.<\/p>\n
Lunch break with the gardeners<\/h2>\n
What I particularly liked was the contact with the other employees. Many of them came from Ecuador or Venezuela, spoke Spanish, I barely did – but somehow we understood each other. During our lunch breaks, we laughed a lot and talked with our hands and feet. <\/p>\n
One of the gardeners now works in waste collection. When I meet him in Paul do Mar, we still greet each other warmly. Such connections mean a lot to me. <\/p>\n
Insight into real life<\/h2>\n
I also helped with breakfast – at the time, nobody was allowed to help at the buffet because of corona. And I saw how hard many employees worked: five to six days a week, often for a salary that was far below what you would expect in Germany. <\/p>\n
I wanted to experience this, not just from stories, but to feel for myself what it’s like to work for such a wage, to be part of a team – in a different language, in a different place.<\/p>\n
Half a year that has achieved a lot<\/h2>\n
After six months, I knew that I wanted to focus more on my actual work again – on yoga, coaching and writing. Financially, the job wouldn’t have been worth it in the long run. But I learned an incredible amount: about myself, about Madeira, about other realities of life. <\/p>\n
And above all, I made contacts that remain with me to this day – in supermarkets, on the street, in everyday encounters. For me, it was real integration: not just being in the yoga room, but in the middle of life on this island. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Why I came to Madeira During my vacation in Madeira, I had already decided that I wanted to live here for a while and drove around the island in my rental car, knocking on hotel doors and introducing myself: “I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5704,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[104],"tags":[115,105],"class_list":["post-5860","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-madeira-en","tag-emigrate-to-madeira","tag-madeira-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lenabremm.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5860","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lenabremm.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lenabremm.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lenabremm.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lenabremm.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5860"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lenabremm.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5860\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lenabremm.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lenabremm.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lenabremm.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lenabremm.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}