No, I'm not referring to a vintage of your favourite wine this time. The actual year 2020, I mean. Our second year with La Experiencia in Moraira. The year that COVID-19 hit the world and forced us into a strict lockdown (in Spain anyway). Now that year has almost come to an end. It’s time to reflect. Despite the pandemic, it hasn’t been all bad, now has it?
The end of the year embodies a period of magic and celebration. Not just because of Christmas. The days start to lengthen again. And normally it means quality time spent with family and friends. But in nature -and for me personally- it is also the time to quiet down. To turn inwards and evaluate. What happened this year? How did it make me feel? What have I learned? What does the coming year promise?
COVID-19 happened
And there is not one person in the world, I can imagine, that has not been affected by this pandemic. Whether you have had the virus yourself, you know people who have been sick (or even died) or your business has suffered from it. And even if it is none of those, then you surely have experienced the rules and regulations implemented (sooner or later) by the government of the country you live in. Whether you agree or not. (Let's not start that discussion right now). In short, this year was difficult.
Friday the 13th
At first, we couldn't believe the seriousness of it. “It's just like the flu” “It won't be that bad.” “It'll be over when the summer starts.” I think we've all said or thought those things at the beginning of the year… Until it got closer and closer, coming from Asia to Italy. Then Madrid.
Disbelief turned into serious worry when we received the notification that we had to close the bar from midnight onward for 2 weeks. This was on Friday afternoon on March 13th. How ironic.
Shit. Now what?!
The lockdown was supposed to be for a fortnight only. So we spent the evening with some of our regular guests, speculating, but not feeling too worried yet. The next day we cleaned the bar thoroughly and took most of the fresh food items with us. Finally at home, the stress did hit… “Shit. Now what?” “How long will this last?” “How long can we survive without an income?” “What if we get sick?”
Emotional rollercoaster
After a few days of feeling like being in an emotional rollercoaster, we decided to stop watching Facebook and the news for a while. All the (often contradicting) negative messages didn’t help. So we said to each other “Let’s treat this as the short break we wouldn't have had otherwise. After the first week, we’ll evaluate our situation and decide what to do next.”
The one exception with a normal break being that we couldn’t leave the house for anything other than doing groceries…
Let it go
That is the first lesson we have (re)learned this year, starting that first week of the lockdown. The situation was out of our hands. Worrying about it did not help at all. It only added to the stress. So; “take a deep breath and let it go”. Life gets a lot easier if you stop worrying about things that are out of your control. Easier said, then done, though, I know...
Work out to calm the mind
Since our opening day in May 2019, besides working, walking and having a swim now and then, we didn’t work out. So the lockdown meant time to rebuild a work out routine. Not only to stay physically in shape. Also to stay sane! Something to do with distraction and endorphins, making you feel better during and after exercise. ;-)
Fall down seven times, get up eight
One of my favourite workouts, besides my yoga practice, is BodyCombat. It motivates me to push myself to the limit. To get up and keep trying. Like the Japanese saying you undoubtedly have heard of before: fall down seven times, get up eight. This year certainly has been like that. Every time we got back on our feet, something else came along and knocked us down again. You’ll see...
Plan B (and C and D)
First of all, ten days after the start of the lockdown, it already got extended for another 2 weeks.
Nobody had any idea where this would end or if and when we could open the bar again. So we needed a plan B (and C and D). Therefore we sketched several scenario’s and possible solutions, just in case. As we were locked in our homes, one obvious path was to look at the online world.
Wine Time online
To keep in touch with our guests we created Wine Time online. Just for fun at first, with a page and a group on Facebook. You can still join us, if you haven’t already, to share your favourite wines, take part in our quiz, wine tastings and more wine fun.
In addition, we decided to build this website with a blog and an option to add a webshop in a later stage. (Working on that right now, by the way ;-) ) This kept us busy for a while, especially making the introduction and wine tasting videos. [update feb.21: the website has changed and the Facebook group has been replaced by this forum]
Wines discovered offline
Speaking of wine tastings. Normally in springtime, we would go to tastings at the local bodegas to find new wines for our menu. Unfortunately, this year those days got cancelled….
But that doesn’t mean we didn’t discover any new wines this year, ;-) You may have seen some of them in our Facebook group or tried them in the bar during Wine Time Live. Remember Abad Godello or Altanza?
Food for thought
So that’s one of the good things. We did taste and discover some nice new wines :-D
Interesting to notice as well, was that nature in the whole world seemed to take a long breath. There were several news reports about nature recovering quickly during the lockdowns. The canals in Venice became clear again, for example. And dolphins were spotted nearer to the coast of Spain… The air literally cleared as there were hardly any planes flying anywhere. Isn’t that food for thought? What kind of ‘normal’ do we want to go back to, really?
Back to business?
Starting May we finally got out of the lockdown. Step by step back to (a new) normal. First, we could only offer wines (and snacks) for ‘ take away’. Then we could open, but only with 30% of our terrace capacity (which left us with 2 tables, basically)... Okay, still, we were open. Nowhere near back to business as usual. But it felt good to be doing something at the bar. Then again, right from the start, bad news always seemed to follow any good news we got.
For example, on May 30th we received good news. Our street (C/ dr. Calatayud) would be closed in the afternoon two weeks sooner than usual. Great! But...
A day later the police told us that with the new social distancing rules, we could not use our terrace when the street was open. In other words; no terrace before 15:00.
Learn to be flexible
Right. So here’s our second lesson learned from this year. “If you can’t do what you do, you do what you can.” (Or; be flexible, nicely described by Bon Jovi ;-) ).
So we changed our opening hours from 17:00 until late.
In hindsight, this turns out to be a change for the positive for us. Because it leaves us with more time for ourselves and to work out, for example. And we don’t have to worry about it becoming a late night, as we don’t have to open in the morning…
Summer 2020
In a normal year, in coastal towns in Spain, like Moraira, the summer brings tourists. And every bar and restaurant needs tourists to make enough money to survive the quieter winter period. Of course, this year that didn’t happen, as travelling didn’t seem such a good idea, under the circumstances... Not enough anyway. People that did come, stayed more in their homes. Others skipped their holiday altogether.
Organise events
So to get people in, we needed to organise attractive events that fit within the COVID-rules. Our before-lockdown-success, live music, turned out not to be an option. As we discovered by the end of June. Although we applied all the rules and everybody had a good time, we received a warning the next day. So a good night, followed by bad news (no more live music).
Continuously be creative
That forced us to work on other ideas and be creative. Resulting in 2 successful events that we will be repeating in 2021: Ladies Night and Perfect Parings.
Of course, being an entrepreneur requires you to continuously be creative and think of new things. To keep the business interesting for yourself as well as for your guests (or clients). The year 2020 just accelerated the whole process for us ;-) And we will continue to think of new ideas in 2021. Bring it on!
A new reality
Just a few hours away 2021 awaits. A new year. A new chapter in the book of our lives. We still aren’t back to business as usual. And even though there is a vaccine now, it will take us all a while to get there again. As I’ve mentioned before, it may be good to think about the new reality we want to go back to. This year we have seen that we don’t really need that much, right?
Let’s enjoy life more
I think it’s good to quiet down a bit in general. Rush less from one place to another. Or from this meeting to the next. Let’s enjoy life more. Well, that is the reason we moved to Spain in the first place ;-) And maybe, hopefully, we have learned to take better care of nature and each other. What do you reckon?
Feel free to share your thoughts and experiences with us below this post.
HAPPY NEW YEAR!!
May 2021 be a better year for all of us.
We’ll continue with Wine Time and La Experiencia and who knows what else ;-)
Cheers!
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