The other side of the wine festival

Even abstinent people can imagine what goes on in Znojmo two hours after midnight on Saturday, when the wine festival ends. But few know how much work is needed to keep it from being obvious in the morning. The company .A.S.A. EKO Znojmo, which has traditionally made sure the city is crisp and fragrant on Sunday just like a baby, could write novels about it.

Story from Znojemsko magazine(www.znojemsko.cz)

Waiting till everything is over to clean up would be too late

One of the misconceptions and naive notions is that .A.S.A. begins to clean up the mess when people stop making it. It doesn’t work that way. The cleanup needs to be continuous and the cleaning schedule refined at least six months in advance. And done in such a way so that visitors to the wine festival don’t feel that they are obstructing .A.S.A. employees.

The less people pay attention to cleaners during the wine festival, the more .A.S.A. has to turn to keep everything spic and span. Moreover, quickly and quietly so that the cleaners are not seen more than is absolutely necessary. Therefore, the 174 plastic bags placed throughout the urban conservation area are emptied during the entire festival so that visitors barely notice it. And cleaning requires a certain forte! This proven method is reliable because people at that moment have entirely different priorities. Some for the most part themselves.

 

The more you have in your head, the less you look for a trashcan

The old rule that if one person is enjoying himself, the others must watch out for him applies three times as much in the case of the company .A.S.A. Five collection lines for plastic bags cannot of course handle the onslaught of waste. Wooden boxes and large containers, thirteen altogether, provide assistance, with each of them swallowing eleven meters of cubic filth. But not even this appetite for cleaning is enough. When the human swarm starts to run out of breath on Friday and Saturday evening after ten o’clock, garbage collectors and special sweepers take a deep breath. But even these two compact professionally run Egholm machines can’t sweep up everything. That’s, why comes the one, who caused everything. A human.

 

The assault on garbage starts two hours after midnight

With strategic precision, the sophisticated cleaning plan culminates after midnight on Saturday, when the .A.S.A. workforce gathers on Freedom Square in Znojmo, 80 total (another 50 workers were hired for the festival). The cleaning work begins at night and ends at daybreak. And only when everything has been cleaned to such perfection, as if the Znojmo wine festival never existed.

 

The vandal is worse than the slob

Lastly, I experienced a similar buzz of brooms during the autumn shift of the National Front – the only difference being that this time with the obligatory jug. The cleaners, however, had completely different ideas in the sleepy hours after midnight. Although the mess was disproportionately lower than last year, the streets looked unappealing. But all it took was half an hour to begin making all the cups, paper and plastic bottles and trash to somehow disappear into the bowels of garbage trucks. Drivers and garbage men darting about in perfect harmony, which clearly told of many years of experience. While some are removing the trash, others are picking up the cleaning signs, because what else is known about this extravaganza is that everything must be restored to its original condition.

 

Before       After

Before       After

Before       After

 

“The wine festival is our single biggest annual event, but I have to admit that we are more worried about vandals than about those who make a mess. We’re powerless to do anything about them, although we were able to protect parking machines with plastic tape, something which definitely paid off,” says .A.S.A. Eko Znojmo manager Josef Esterka, who along with Josef Zábraha, is one of the main conductors of the cleaning orchestra.

So, if we want our Sunday to look sparkling after the wine festival, then hats off to those who with iron regularity clean up the city so that it looks immaculate again in the morning. It should be added that A.S.A.S.I.N.S. know how to clean very well.