An Alternative Profession – Guide (two sides of one coin)

Hi! My name’s Alyona and I’m actually a teacher of English and French. But a couple of years ago I made up my mind to try my hand at guiding. Well, by now I presume I’ve got a more or less complete picture of what it’s like to be a guide and I’ll gladly share it with you.
Probably the first thing that comes up to mind when you hear the word “guiding” is traveling. And that is right. And that is great! Being a guide does really provide you with a perfect chance to travel widely, to see new places, new sights, to discover curiosities of far-away lands, to taste their cuisine and what not… No doubt it’s superb when you can see, say, Paris, twice a month, wonder at its sights and breathe its “historical” air.
There is also a significant aspect of learning and self-educating to being a guide. You have to know a lot. You need to acquire a clear image of the country you take your tourists to. Answering tricky questions is part of this job, too, so you also need to be smart, quick-minded, broad-minded and be able to think rationally. So if you enjoy reading, learning and digging deeper into the unknown, this occupation is for you.
So far it looks fantastic and light, doesn’t it? But…
Should you take a closer look, you’ll discover so many buts that will add a plump fly to your fine ointment.
Let me now unveil some aspects of a guide’s daily life and blow the cover of this somewhat idealized profession.
First and foremost is the fact that all the pleasant activities enumerated above, having become your duties make a big difference. Fancy, you like cooking. You’ve got skills and imagination and your relatives praise you when you prepare a nice family dinner… But imagine you have become a cook. Now you have to be at the cooker from dawn till dusk; spoons, forks and kitchen knives have become your best friends and what’s more – it’s not you now, who makes the recipes, but you need to follow your customers’ tastes, which are often so far from yours… Nice picture, isn’t it?.. Same with guiding.
You may wish to do so many fabulous things in the cities you visit, but your job restricts you a lot as you have to follow the set schedule and be with your tourists. You may ask me how many times I was in Brussels, and I’ll tell you: a dozen. Ask me if I managed to feel Brussels in every meaning this word incorporates – and I’ll tell you “no”. A guide doesn’t have the freedom that his or her tourists have.
A guide should be a real diplomat with a great portion of patience. You never know what questions, whims, caprices, claims and complaints they can express. You can get diametrically different opinions on one and the same occasion. For instance, an hour tour to one and the same sight may end up with “Oh, how can you spend just half an hour at such a magnificent place?!!” or “Oh, how do you dare squander three hours for such a trifle, while we haven’t visited that super-giga-megamarket?!!”
The abundance of questions a guide has to respond to is amazing, provided that more than half of them are about ready information. A guide does really need a good deal of patience, tenacity and self-control to answer the stupidest ones, like: Is Benelux one country? When are we going to that hill of Mont Blanc to see Sacre Coeur? How can I get to the Bastille? Shall we visit the district of Monaco while in Germany? What’s the time difference between Italy and Spain? Is the French euro more expensive than the Swiss one? Why do we go to the Netherlands while Holland was on the programme?.. and so on and so forth. There is a classical tourist anecdote which is actually very close to reality:
An elderly American couple wandering along the streets of an Italian town.
– Honey, are we in Venice or in Florence?
– Oh, is it Wednesday or Thursday today?
– It’s Thursday, dear.
– So, we are in Venice.
As you can see, being a professional in the sphere of guiding requires not only thorough knowledge of the subject, but also a number of qualities you sometimes don’t even think of as necessary. You need to be a patient, helping, enthusiastic, communicative and charismatic group-leader.
Well, quite often when people learn that I do guiding the picture their imagination paints is so bright and cheerful that they start envying me. But you know by now that guiding is not just pure honey, although really very sweet.
Concluding my thoughts I’d like to mention, that professionalism, mixed with love and a grain of enthusiasm is a perfect recipe for a good job, which can work miracles. So when, after the tour, you see the cheerful smiles on the faces of the satisfied tourists and receive favorable reports, you do feel you did a good job. And that warms your heart.