The apprenticeship

After a shaky start, I realized that the craft was getting into my blood.
Whenever they called me for an extra, besides the pleasure for the money, I felt thrilled.
From my eighteen years onwards, it can be said that I spent a few Sundays free. This has never weighed on me. With Paolo and Bruna from the Dei Caffi restaurant I spent almost five years at alternating moments and doing extras in other places as well. Some periods I was fixed and others flying but it was fine. It was what for a novice is called apprenticeship. You learn a lot by watching others. You steal your trade when you want to learn. I was like a sponge, I wanted to be good. For some periods I also worked in other places, also with functions as Maitre but I was realizing that the counter-bar attracted me like a magnet.
At that time they were working on opening a nightclub near their home. I thought there might be a professional bartender to organize the bars. If I had been hired and joined by this type of person, I could have learned a lot about the job of the bar. When you are young the word "cocktail" takes on a certain charm and learning to prepare them, even more.
I was hired, and the thing that stunned me was that there were no professional bartenders; they assigned me the responsibility of the american bar.
Even here I didn't know how to do anything but I bought many books and studying a lot, almost swallowing up the texts, I was able to practice pretending to be a professional.
After a winter season I was contacted by another place for the summer season. I accepted.
Just during the summer I was "hired" by Piero del ¨Pantera rosa¨, the most INN disco in the area.
The most coveted by customers and by those like me who would have liked to go to work there.
I started in September, I was twenty-six and for the world of the bar with a capital B my second apprenticeship began. It was the hardest but Piero, Italo and Guido were the real masters I had been looking for for years.
I don't know if I learned everything they could teach me but I owe my professional foundation to them.

I started from scratch, as a disco glass collector but in a suit and tie. Over the years with them I noticed all the facets of the night from the point of view of work. I also suffered humiliation from employers towards clients but, today, I can only thank them. They shaped my work on me like a diving suit. Now I realize that even not knowing how to sing, dance or play, I was still looking for my stage to perform.
I stayed with them for almost three years, intense, hard, tiring and beautiful !!!