“I could write a book about it.” The Mittenwald waiter Rene Urbasik has often heard this sentence from his colleagues.
Now he has dared and written one.
A satirical work about his everyday life that shows one thing: Where there is a fire in the catering trade.
He deliberately renounces the topic of Corona - and taboos.
Mittenwald
- “I want ice cream!” The words from the child's mouth sound like an order.
“No, there will be ice cream later.
What do you want to eat now?
Do you like pizza? ”“ Pizza! ”Says little Caspar-Aurelio.
Rene Urbasik has been standing at the table with pen and pad for what felt like five minutes.
The waiter's hand is slowly falling asleep.
It's a scorching Sunday, and the sun terrace is jam-packed with guests.
Urbasik tries, with clenched teeth, to ignore the numerous hands waving to him from the other tables and the sometimes foul shouts.
Finally, a little king sits in front of him, whose mother has left it to him to order from the waiter himself.
"Ahem", Urbasik clears his throat politely.
“We are not an Italian restaurant.
We don't have any pizza. ”When he offers to think again about what they want to eat and take a look at the children's menu, the mother literally explodes.
"I was followed by the fury into the kitchen and yelled at all the time to treat your child with the exotic name politely."
Humorous help
It is just one of countless experiences that Urbasik and its guild of restaurant professionals experience every day, or rather have to suffer.
The north German who works in Mittenwald has now written a book about his experience from 30 years of gastronomy.
“Focal point gastronomy - a waiter sounds the alarm.” But contrary to what the title might suggest, his work is not to be understood as an indictment against all the guests who rob the restaurateurs of their last nerve every day.
“It's more of a help.” Satire, humorous and exaggerated, but true to the core.
What stumbling blocks await guests who enter the restaurant with their dogs?
Or parents who introduce their offspring to the world of restaurants?
Urbasik writes from the point of view of a service employee.
From life in the restaurant business.
Cheeky and critical, but never outrageous.
Now, during the corona-related forced break, he finally had the time to look for a publisher for his book.
He found him with Thomas Schwarz from Mittenwald.
Recently the satirical read went on sale.
And with it the unsparing truth.
How the guest has changed in contrast to before.
And like a waiter would take revenge on eccentric regulars, a lottery win fluttered into the house.
Originally, the work should have been called "Knigge für Restaurantbesucher" when he completed it in February 2020 - before Corona brought the gastronomy to its knees.
Nevertheless, Urbasik did not want to take up the topic.
I was even considering conjuring up a marketing gag out of it.
To stick a "Guaranteed Corona-free" sticker on the cover.
Work with 316 pages
But first of all a printed book was needed.
The waiter found it difficult to publish his 316 pages.
The big publishers refused.
You only take those authors who are already successful in publishing books.
Urbasik, born in Mecklenburg, has already written two books and published them with a self-publisher in Hamburg.
But he is not - yet - one of the greats.
He has loved writing since he was ten years old.
Preferably westerns.
When he first traveled to England after his apprenticeship as a restaurant specialist in Bremen to work in a hunting hotel, he was drawn from a bed castle in Pasing and a well-frequented excursion restaurant on Lake Starnberg to Mittenwald a year ago.
There he met Schwarz in a roundabout way.
He too used the pandemic to fulfill a long-cherished dream: to publish books.
Ultimately, fate must have brought both of them together: Urbasik had a book, but needed a publisher.
Schwarz was a publisher but needed a book.
A win-win situation, as they say in modern German.
So they both met.
With his family business SchwarzWeisses-Verlag, Schwarz fills an interesting niche in the market.
Anyone who has a manuscript or just an idea can contact him.
Together with his wife and older daughters, he works on the layout and proofreads the work - all from a single source.
At the moment, a printing company in Württemberg is ultimately putting the book on paper.
Since they print piece by piece, Schwarz saves storage costs and can also produce very short runs.
The author pays nothing for this, but in return receives a share for each copy sold.
The innkeeper of the Mittenwald Klammkiosk, Christian Fichtl, came up with the publishing idea for Schwarz.
On request, the family made him the hiking guide “The Leutasch Gorge”.
Since then she has published illustrated books, e-books, non-fiction and children's books, novels and audio books.
For Thomas Schwarz, Urbasik is a stroke of luck.
Even if the Corona measures have paralyzed the catering trade, the book will be “more topical than ever after the crisis”.
NEW RELEASE
Rene Urbasik's satirical reading “Brennpunkt Gastronomie - a waiter sounds the alarm” was published on April 1, 2021 by SchwarzWeiss Verlag and costs 19.99 euros. The ISBN number is 9783982201979. It is available in bookstores, online or directly from the publisher at www.schwarz weisses.de.
