TT part 4

Our grand tour of Italy included Florence, Rome and Venice with day stops in Pisa and Orvieto. Pisa was our first stop, although the chefs spent the whole time in an amazing supermarket on the outskirts and only made it in so far as the coach park. Apparently this is what happens on each trip so Pisa is nothing to look forward to for us. Except for the supermarket. As we went through Italy we found that their supermarkets were almost all this fantastic, but this was the first. The deli section was the best, cured meats as far as the eye could see (almost) cheeses of all types piled high, fresh pasta the likes that I haven’t seen before packaged and waiting to eaten, vegetables that I have never seen before and fresh cakes with cream and fruit looking luscious and sweet. Ah-mazing. I didn’t end up minding missing out on Pisa.

In Florence we were staying in a huge accommodation, a campsite about 30 minutes drive out of the city. Each other time I have stayed in Florence I have stayed in camping Michelangelo which is just a walk out of town and I was excited to hear that on a regular trip we would be staying there also. Camping Girasole where we were covered acres and had a water park, night club, 3 restaurants, a supermarket and I’m sure much more included on its site. We were lucky enough to be staying in cabins here and had dinner in one of the restaurants. Florence was actually another good city for the chefs as we had dinner out both nights here.

Oh Florence. How I love you. This time was my third time to the city and it still retained its majesty for me. It was a beautiful warm day as we walked around the city. We were given a guided tour by a local, I loved this during TT, all these cities that I had been to before but I had never been given a tour of before, it was a great learning experience! The other thing I loved on TT was being able to walk around anywhere and just ask the closest TL “Hey, what’s that building?” or “Can you explain the fall of communism in the Balkans again? I didn’t quite get it.” And they could generally tell me! It was like having a walking talking guide book.

We met with suppliers at a leatherwork store before traversing the Florence from campsite to hostel, sampling the gelati and coffee on the way (When I write it like this it really doesn’t sound like such a bad trip!) We met for dinner that night at a restaurant in town which ended in karaoke with the trainers joining in as well and everyone dancing and singing together was only the start to a very memorable night. It was so memorable because when we arrived back at camp at 11pm, me with my head filled of the homework I had to do, we were told to meet in the camp nightclub in 15 minutes. I couldn’t believe it. We had had a huge day, I had things to do and I was still not clear of that cloud that had gathered over me in Antibes. Still I went down to the club and pasted a smile on my face, what else could I do?! We danced until we were let out of the club at 2am. All of us tired but with no choice, the only choice we could make was to enjoy ourselves. And we did. We encouraged the shyer ones to get up on the dance floor, we showed off our moves and when we saw another slowing down and starting to lag, we went to them and tried to raise them back up to some level of energy where they could continue. I loved my fellow trainees that night. When 2 am came and we checked out with our trainers (who were marking us off on their lists) they told us that they would see us again in a few hours at 5:30. One thing I became very good at was falling asleep instantly!

Day 24 we got up blurry eyed but still smiling and began our drive to Rome. On drive days, which were every other day, we were divided on the coach. Drivers sat up the front so that they could take route notes and watch signs, TL’s sat in the middle whilst they studied their history and stats and got called up to spiel on the microphone and chefs sat on the back seat and made meal plans and shopping lists and recipes. We may have called ourselves the backseat bandits but given half a chance we moved as far up the coach as possible! The back seat was the warmest (not good for trying to stay awake) the noisiest (being near the engine) and on our coach had a seat that we termed the torture seat, naughty corner or devils seat. For some reason this seat had bits of metal sticking up in it and on several occasions, normally sane people lost their temper whilst sitting there. It was soon declared off limits after that. Whilst driving we had to work and we had to stay awake. These were together, big tasks and I did the majority of my work standing up and writing leaning on the back of a seat to keep from falling asleep. Probably 75% of the time I spent standing, giving the TL’s and interested face every now and then, watching the scenery and getting close to the AC.

Every day though, you would have a moment or so when lucidness was not present and on these occasions different people reacted differently. We would become what we termed ‘Starry eyed’ which is that face where your forehead is all scrunched trying to keep your eyes open, and they are, but they aren’t seeing anything, and someone would say your name as if from a distance which would bring you back for all of 10 seconds before you went back to that place that lives just in front of your eyes and disconnected from your body... I know this place well. My writing would become illegible whilst I struggled to pretend I was still awake. Laura would write random items onto her shopping. One day she showed us a list to which, in her delirium, she had added “mixed herds – don’t make them angry, Potatoes – 50 Aus and 50 US” and “100mls of Italy”. That shopping list has gone down in TT history.

We stopped on our drive at Orvieto, a hilltop town, for lunch. We dashed up the hill to one of the most spectacular cathedrals I have ever seen and had just enough time for a wild boar sandwich and lavender chocolate before heading down again for lunch. Hey. A cooks gotta do what a cooks gotta do!

On arrival in Rome the TL’s had to go out and practice what is one of their biggest spiels, the 3 hour walking tour in Rome. The cooks got excited by the fact that the supermarket was across the road from the camp and we also met the catering manager for Topdeck whom we had heard so much about. That was a very nerve wracking time. Rome was big for us in general; we have a showcase meal that we cook there. The magical Lasagne without an oven. I was cook of the day for that day and was lucky enough to be in charge of cooking that one; I also did white bean bruschetta as a starter and tiramisu for dessert. Yum yum! During our time in Rome we also did a Vatican tour and fact finding of the city. I fact found some more delicious gelato and the Capuchin monks catacombs which are totally decorated in bones in a most spectacular and slightly creepy way. I started seeing things as my tiredness caught up on me in Rome and it was at that time that I decided (with others) that napping on the lawn in front of a shopping centre was probably the best idea ever. Life saver.

Rome also become a focal point for the trip because it was when we got severely culled. By this time several people had already been asked to leave including 3 in one go in Barcelona and it was a shock every time. It felt like living in a game show, we would all of a sudden discover that someone was evicted and had to leave straight away. In Rome they announced to us that they would be culling us so that we would fit into one coach instead of two. We were left hanging on this terrifying statement for a whole day before they announced that 6 of the chefs would be going to continue their training on site and that 3 of the drivers would be going off on Walla trips (basically shadowing another driver on a real trip). So this meant that actually only 2 people left the trip entirely in Rome. When the next morning we crammed all 49 of us into the one coach there was a very different feeling in the air. We were making our way to Albania today and it felt like TT had passed the halfway point and it was a downhill roll from here. Or at least that is how it felt for me. How wrong I was.

Part 3 of TT

On our second day in Barcelona I was cook of the day. What I may not have explained is that for each day we had a crew of the day when a driver, chef and TL were selected to run the day. Chefs got to know in advance so that we could shop in advance, drivers got to know the night before so that they could get rested but TLs often did not know until first thing in the morning or even swapped during the day. There was one occasion where the whole trip was woken at 3am and the trainers swapped all of the crew of the day in one go. This was hectic because we had to do a lot of organising then on the spot, in the middle of the night.

So cook of the day in Barcelona was actually a sweet deal because we were in a hostel with breakfast provided and we were buying our own dinner! All I had to do was prepare 80 lunches out of my room.... That was the night I got an hour and a half sleep. That morning we were sent into the city for fact finding. I fact found breakfast at La Boqueria a beautiful food market off of La Rambla whilst we watched the store holders setting up their wares of dried and fresh fruit, seafood still wriggling on the ice, huge slabs of cheese, vegetables so perfect and shining that I thought they could be plastic! The sweet smell of spices and herbs and chocolate wafted and made my coffee and pastry taste even better as I waited for the supermarket to open so we could go shopping.

Even in these early days of the trip we were used to having tests sprung on us and so, as the chefs waited for our trainer to turn up at the agreed meeting point, every minute she was late we got more nervous. Surely this was a test? Was this her way of forcing us to do the shopping by ourselves? Of getting us to use our initiative to find our way back to the hostel on public transport? Were we meant to start without her to show how we valued timekeeping? It was all too confusing. In the end she was just late of course and we breathed a sigh of relief, this time it was not a test. (Later in the trip I would wake up in a tent with Tarryn with the rain bucketing down outside and our departure time in just under an hour. Tarryn asked me sleepily if the rain was a test but I reassured her that the trainers did not have control of the weather and this one was just bad luck)

That night we went to a flamenco performance in Placa Reial which was awesome.  Crazy guttural throat singing, stamping and waving of skirts all in an exotic location. Placa Reial has gone down as one of the places I really need to get back to, the square was lit with an orange glow that showed up the palm trees and white archways of the bars and restaurants like they were glowing from real fire. It took my imagination back to times of old spice traders and for some reason, Shakespeare’s Othello. A drink definitely needs to be had here in the future.

Our drive from Barcelona took us up to the French Riviera. Everywhere we went the scenery was new and exciting and here was no exception. Think clichéd Van Gogh paintings and you won’t be far off.  We stopped by Fragonards (say it out loud, its fun) a family run perfumery where we were shown the perfume making process, and told about the position of ‘The Nose’. The Nose is the person who creates new perfumes, I think they said there are only about 50 of them in the world and it takes about 9 years of training to get the position. The girls on the trip loved it all and the guys even enjoyed it because of the pretty girls who took us around.

We stayed in Antibes which is in-between Cannes and Nice and it was there in that campsite that I had my biggest struggle. I had not had enough sleep for weeks, we had been tested too many times and we had just been given more study work than I thought I could handle. For the two nights we were in Antibes I was speaking to my family telling them that I was going to leave the trip once we got to our next stop, Florence. In my mind I was already planning what I was going to do for work once I got to the Netherlands. This was when the TT crew pulled together for me. People saw me falling apart and so many people came to talk me through it and give me the support I needed and this was part of what made me continue. The other part was arriving in one of my favourite cities, Florence and the feeling of calm that came over me as I walked down the streets made me think that maybe I could do it.

Back to Antibes. The best bit about Antibes was Monaco! We drove up to Monaco one night dressed up in the best clothes we had for a quick tour and fact finding. I fact found the Monte Carlo casino, the grand prix track, the best rooftop bar for views of the city and Buddha bar, a bar like I haven’t seen before that I promised I was coming back to. Monaco itself was an incredible place. The sort of place that you see in movies and think must be digitally created. Because it is such a small area it is FULL, no area is left bare, but it is all done beautifully. Roads gracefully curve over each other and towers rise high with delicate bridges built connecting them. Where there is a clear space it is green and manicured, probably with a fountain in it and everything is clean. We were only there for a few hours and I can’t wait to go back and really enjoy it from a rooftop or the Buddha bar.

Next stop Italy! A chef’s favourite destination!

Part 2 of TT

In sum up of Paris, I learnt that Charlemagne was “so big he could mount his horse from behind” that at the Paris opera, “to your left, you can see boobs” that it is possible to fall asleep standing up, and that I had never been properly cold before. To sleep in our tent I wore 3 pairs of jeans with woollen tights underneath, 3 pairs of socks, 7 layers of hoodies, thermals, jackets and jumpers on top, I wrapped myself in my giant scarf like it was a cocoon and zipped into my sleeping bag which was insulated from the ground by a lilo and newspaper (a little trick I picked up from the homeless). It was snowing as we took down our tents on the last morning and I thought I was never going to get to feel my fingers again. There is a reason that Topdeck doesn't take out camping trips this early in the year! I also thought I was never going to hear the end of Napoleon. It turns out I was right about that one.

The whole drive to Lauterbrunnen in Switzerland was filled with whispered wonderings as to whether we would be camping again. The sigh of relief when the TL of the day announced that they were reading out the rooming list was audible. We still set up the cook tent and ate outside amongst piles of snow but we slept in cabins. Lauterbrunnen was a special site for the chefs. When we are not on a trip we will be based at one of 3 permanent cook sites. One in Lauters one in Rome and one in Venice. These are 3 major sites that the majority of trips come through and so there are large marquees and a permanent kitchen set up at each one. Here we will cater for up to 200 people a night and breakfast and sometimes lunch, so I was very interested to see the first one of these sites. It did not disappoint. Lauterbrunnen is at the bottom of a steep valley, noise in the town has to stop after 10pm because of the disturbance caused by any sound echoing around the mountains. There are huge waterfalls tumbling from the cliff faces around the campsite and if you need any more of a visual I need only tell you that it was JRR Tolkien’s inspiration for Rivendell, which should cement in your mind the idyllic location that we were in.

On our day in Lauters we were treated to a trip up Jungfrau. Jungfrau is advertised as the roof of Europe and is 4,158 meters high (that’s about 4 times the height of the Blue Mountains for Sydneysiders playing at home). We went up on a cute little railway and were warned about altitude sickness. Some people did feel sick, I certainly felt light headed and short of breath and at lunch time, Michelle and I were overcome with the giggles to such an extent that we could only blame the height! They had really cool caves within a glacier, ice carvings and outdoor platforms where on a nice day you could appreciate the view but we could barely see 10 meters in front of ourselves! The whole experience was only topped by the next day when we went to Engleburg and up Mt Titlis. After the jokes about the mountain being a bit higher than the name might suggest (it is 3,238 meters high) we ascended it in ‘Gondolas’ and were provided chocolate bars in preparation for the altitude sickness (sugar helps). What they couldn’t prepare us for was the world that greeted us once we broke through the clouds. The gasp from our group as we saw the sun ricocheting off the solid mass of clouds and sharply defining the jagged edges of the black mountains made the locals laugh. Our mouths stayed open for the rest of that visit. This time we didn’t spend nearly as much time in their ice caves because outside was just so glorious. There was a swing bridge to cross, snow angels to make and skiers to watch descending into the clouds. A-mazing. That night we stayed in a cute ski lodge in town and I was babysitting some lettuces I didn’t want to wilt and so I hung them out the window to keep fresh in the chill air. The chefs were probably the only ones who missed the cold weather once it was gone.

Our next stop was in Avignon in the south of France.

Side note – in an attempt to make us more international and less bogan Australian, everyone on trip but especially the TL’s were being pulled up on their pronunciation. The big one was France. It was to be pronounced in the cultured, European way, not the bogan nasally Australian way. I found this very hard.

 Back to Avignon. It is a totally walled city with an interesting half- bridge thing going on in its river. The chefs didn’t get into the city until about 10pm that night as we were setting camp up checking out supermarkets and cooking and by the time the TL’s led us over for our tour it was completely deserted. The whole place was beautifully lit up and I could imagine that with the carousel going and people in the bars it would be idyllic, but come Sunday evening it was very quiet.

The next morning we were up early (again, check in with our trainers was generally before 6am and we had to check in dressed and ready for the day). This was a big day of driving, first stop was Pont Du Gard, an ancient roman aqueduct 3 levels high and very impressive. We stopped for less than an hour just to look and let the TL’s spiel on it before we continued on down to Barcelona (Pronounced – Barthelona). I guess I had forgotten about where we were going because when we got off the coach in the centre of the city to look at the Segrada Familia I was still wearing 2 layers of pants and woollen socks and was distinctly uncomfortable. Not that I was complaining, I was thrilled that it was warm! We drove around the city a few times, staring with open mouths as we rounded the top of the hill to the side of the city and taking in the sweeping views of a lively city that spread from the sea all the way up the surrounding hills and back into the valley. We drove past the port where Christopher Columbus set off to discover the new world and spied on the many many buildings designed by Gaudi, it really is his city. That night we ate Tapas and Paella (No sangria unfortunately, no alcohol allowed on TT) before we got back on the coach to continue looping the city.

TBC...

Training Trip part 1...

Hi there! My name’s Gemma. You may remember me from 8 weeks ago when I was last on social media. For all those that don’t know, I have been on an intensive training trip for the last month and a half around Europe. The company is Topdeck, a name that does not seem to instantly resonate with most people I have found but hopefully will soon J They are a tour company with routes all around the world in Africa, Australia, New Zealand, North America and of course Europe catering for 18 to 30 something’s. I’m not in marketing so if you want to know more, there is a website. Prepare yourself, I am going to try and condense this but those of you that know me know that I have a lot to say.

My getting over to this training trip was all chance. Jasmine had been on one of their trips last year and has another one booked in for just a few weeks time. We were walking one day, me talking about how I didn’t know what direction I wanted my work to go in and how there were just too many options! Jas mentioned that her Trip Leader from her tour had been in a similar situation and had trained as an on road chef for Topdeck and never looked back. That night, when sitting in my windowless office in Sydney CBD after management had left, I printed off the application form thinking ‘Why not?’

Skip forward to 2 months later after interviews in Brisbane, frantically faxing credit card details from a hostel in Wellington, New Zealand and total panic over last minute visas coming from Kuala Lumpar and I was in London walking to my first day in the ‘Classroom’ (Read: room at the top of a pub in Hammersmith). I found out recently that the person I sat next to on that first day thought I must be a real tough bitch of a girl because I was so stone faced. I apologised to him, explaining that I was just totally terrified of what I was getting myself into! I came home that night, rang my parents in tears telling them that I couldn’t do it. I wish I could tell you this was the last time that happened.

Consolation came weeks later into the trip when we discovered that almost all of us had had the same reaction on the first or second day, in fact some people did leave right then. For me it was the realisation that I really didn’t have a whole lot else to do and the fact that I knew I had to give it more of a chance than just one day.

Our training trip started two days later in Wemeldinge, a small town in Zeeland in the Netherlands. There was snow on the ground despite the fact that it was spring and every day more fluttered down. In our beautiful accommodation we started to get to know each other. The training group started with 77 trainees. Trip leaders, Drivers and Chefs. 15 chefs started the training trip (henceforth known as TT), about 20 something drivers and LOTS of Trip Leaders (henceforth known as TL’s).  We are not a very shy bunch and the accommodation was soon bustling.

In the day we were split, the chefs were doing shopping lists, making recipes, drawing up meal plans and talking about the destinations we would be going to, gathering translations and public holidays and of course, cooking. The TL’s were (I think) learning how to spiel, how to tell a story, be interesting, think on their feet, procedures, accounts and goodness know what else. The drivers were learning how to drive! They went around and around the town of Goes until the police asked what was happening, they learnt how to route note and how to clean the coach, even when the water froze onto the windscreen as they poured it on. In my group there were trained chefs (one) and people like me, far removed from the cooking world. In the TL’s there were history teachers and tour guides and others who had just thought that it looked like fun, and in the drivers there were those who had already worked for Topdeck in NZ and Aus, one guy had even been working for they-who-shall-not-be-named  around Europe and then there were those who had only driven a coach when they got their licence a month ago. It was a healthy mix and Wemeldinge was a fun place. In our week there we got one break. Just one. For 45 minutes. This was just a taste of what was to come. We went up to Amsterdam one day, to give all of us something new to do and also to pick up 2 chefs who were joining us. It was also our first taste of what visiting the great cities of Europe was going to be like. We dashed around all day, trying to find meeting points, trying to find supermarkets, trying to find places to buy warmer clothes! I wolfed down chips for dinner and didn’t even get to make it to my favourite place, the red light district! It felt like a huge day, but like I said, only a taster.

Our first real stop was Paris. But first I think, a little about the position I was going for. Topdeck has a multitude of different trips that they offer, split into categories of Hotel, Club (a mix of accommodation) and Camping. The chefs only go on the camping trips (with two exceptions) and set up amongst the tents with their own cook tent and serve up delicious breakfast, lunch and dinner to waiting passengers. All of our cooking is done on 5 gas burners sitting about a foot off the ground. I was sceptical about what could be done with this but boy was I impressed with some of the things we pulled out of that tent!

Our Paris campsite was not what I was expecting and we set up the tent on gravel and smashed out a first night dinner in under 2 hours (remembering, cooking for 77 people) we had to go fast because we were going straight into driving tours. This was our first of many. What happens is when a trip comes into a new country, the TL does a spiel on where they are, the culture, history teaches a bit of language and lets you know what some of the essential experiences, foods and knowledge is. This goes for about half an hour, no small speech. Then when we come into a city, they have a city specific spiel as well and then in certain destinations there are driving tours or walking tours. The Paris night driving tours goes for 3 hours normally but we were doing it for the TLs and drivers to practice the route and so we went around and around and around and around and around.... We had 4 coaches circling the city for the first 3 nights in order to give as many people practice as possible. And the chefs? We had to take notes, give feedback and above all STAY AWAKE. This was a HUGE part of the trip. No sleeping on the coach ever. Just to help it sink it in how hard these driving tours were, there were TL’s who had never been to Paris, they had never seen the Eiffel tower let alone the Austerlitz column and yet they still had to recognise it on first sight and let us know interesting and relevant facts and stories about it. I am still, 8 weeks later in awe of their abilities. And the drivers, we have all heard about the roundabout at the Arc de Triumph, 6 lanes, no lines, and some of our drivers had only been driving a coach for one week! Needless to say we applauded each time we made it on and off.

During the day the chefs visited a Metro supermarket, similar to a Costco I believe, where everything is bulk buy and entry is buy membership only. I have never seen so much food purchased in my life. People took pictures of us. It was an eye opening experience and I still don’t know how I am supposed to do that shop by myself one day....

Some of what we were purchasing was for what is one of the chef’s crowning moments of a trip. The Paris Picnic. We put on a huge spread of delicious and local foods under the Eiffel Tower for the second night of our trips. It was a lot of fun to prepare and I cooked and ate snails for the first (but not last) time ever!

 Other things we did with our days were meeting suppliers and Fact Finding. Oh how I learnt to dislike those words. At first it was fun, we would run around a city in our designated groups finding the opening hours, prices, group discounts and general info of all the attractions, restaurants, bars, markets, public toilets and parks. But I couldn’t keep the enthusiasm for it throughout the whole trip, in fact it died pretty quick.