by Lara
Working in the galley is often pretty crazy. Normally you have to stand up at six o’clock in order to make breakfast for the first people who want to eat at seven twenty. If you have to work in the galley while the ship lays in the harbour it’s actually easy because nothing falls down or slides over the whole table if you don’t hold it. Then you have to put the dishes, some cheese, meat, butter and cream cheese for breakfast on the tables. You also have to make a fruit salad and get some yogurt out of the fridge so that you can serve it with muesli.
But when there are big waves which rock the ship it’s not that easy. You need special tablecloths for the tables so that the things on the table are not able to fall down. These are so-called “Antirutschdecken”, anti-sliding-tablecloth, and they work pretty well. We need them for every meal. And when you finish the preparations the first hungry youths come and you have to serve them. Its pretty hard to be fast enough and bring everybody the right thing at the same time. But I think it’s also really cool and a lot of fun.
And what I nearly forgot: washing the dishes after every meal. This is the most annoying thing because without a dishwasher it’s quite a lot. I mean we are 50 people on this ship. And that is only breakfast. We also have lunch, coffee and dinner left. For lunch we always had something warm, for example noodles with a vegetable sauce. But that changed after the first part of our journey. Now we have something cold: often we serve sandwiches and stuff like that. And I think that’s way better because if we do it that way round we get warm food for dinner and I really like it like that because it is how I know it from home. When the galley crew make sandwiches in the kitchen they put things like salad, sauces, toasted bread, tomatoes, cucumbers and tuna on a big table outside and everybody can put the things they like on their bread. This always tastes good because you can choose what you like and how much of it.
When we make coffee we usually put some cookies or fruits on a big plate so that everybody gets one slice or piece of it. And of course, there is coffee and tea that you can take, too. The exception is when there is a birthday. Then the kitchen team from the last day prepares any type of cake the birthday child or adult likes.
The next meal is the dinner at 18 o’clock and for this we have a stove, an oven, and a fryer where we can cook in and that’s even more fun and complicated if there are big waves, because then it could happen that the food just falls out of its mould when it is inside the oven. And you can do nothing against it.
When everyone has finished their dinner and we have washed the last dishes we are ready for the last clean-up. Everything we have used and the whole galley including every wall must be so clean that it’s shining and that’s a very exhausting part, because it’s really a lot of work and it’s late at night. Only when you are fast you are able to finish it before 9 o’clock.
Also, the floor has to be cleaned up and this can take up to one hour. After you finished cleaning the floor you have finished your day in the galley, which is normally around 21 o’clock. It is a lot of fun and there is good music, because the kitchen is the only place on the whole ship where you are always allowed to listen to loud music. But it’s also a lot of hard work. I actually like it. And I am looking forward to the next time I have to work in the galley.