The next day we got up at 7 in order
to be on the road at 9. Sitting in the jump seat next to Brian I was a ball of
nerves and excitement. Speeding through the flat green landscape of Zeeland
then Belgium then France we wondered what our Trip Leader would be like, neither
of us having met him before Dave would be as familiar a face to us as the new
passengers we were about to pick up. Paula and Stacey however were friends who
had been on Training Trip with me and I was looking forward to having them with
us as ‘walla’ TL’s.
Paula and Stacey were the only
reason I could identify my group when they came off the ferry at Calais with the
other two trips starting that day. Brian and I greeted Dave like an old friend
all the same, sometimes trips are all about the illusion. The illusion that you
know this person and are friends, the illusion that you have been to these
places before, the illusion that this isn’t my first trip!
I saw our new passengers and
thought ‘new friends’. It didn’t help my nerves though, I SO wanted to be the
right mix of authority and friendliness, which I found later comes from being
myself and knowing what I am doing! The closer we got to the Paris campsite the
more my nerves gathered and my head raced with all the things I had to do to make
the right first impression and the right first meal.
That first night was a wonderful
example of what a trip could be like. One girl was sick and Stacey took her to
hospital and was there until 3am. I set up my cook tent and dinner was just
moments away from being served when a car pulled up and told us we were in
their parking spot. The driver stayed in his car until we had moved everything
including the fully constructed cook tent to a new spot. It started raining and
the passengers went off on their driving tour of Paris whilst I stayed back to
clean. Lucky I did because two boys from South Africa turned up very late after
troubles at the airport and found me in the cook tent. I rustled up a quick
dinner for them and found them a free tent in the rain. My cook tent started
flooding so I made sure to collect everything off the ground before going to my
cabin. I made many trips back and forth from my cabin that night to double
check things like whether or not I had left the gas on. It was not a restful
night.
The next day did not get any
easier.
I was up early to serve breakfast but I left
the passengers eating and caught a taxi to the shopping centre where over the
next 3 hours Paula, Stacey and I would spend close to €2000 on food for the
next few days and weeks. This was a huge accomplishment for me and I was happy
with how it was going until my boss was all of a sudden standing in front of
me.
Why? Well because I was new, my
credit card wasn’t quite set up yet, so Dave was supposed to be coming to pay
for all the food. But something was wrong with our coach so he and Brian were at
the mechanics getting it fixed. They had called another of the trips in town to
help me out and Welshy (my boss) happened to be with them. Of course he was
going to come along to check out how a cook on her first trip was going. I was
nervous all over again, reduced to stammering out answers to the questions
Welshy was asking me (he had scared me quite a bit on training trip). Eventually
Welshy even said ‘For goodness sake Gemma, stop being so nervous!’
We eventually got back to the
campsite, quite late at this point, where Dave and Brian had just got in. Jude
and Noddy from the other trip made some calls to arrange for their picnic
(pre-made at a restaurant) to be picked up by yet another trip and to be taken
to the Eiffel Tower. Then we all got down to preparing my picnic in the rain
that had been coming down all day. Water was inches deep in some parts of my
cook tent.
2 hours was all it took for the
feast to be created by the many helping hands but we were still running over
time when I closed the doors on the food laden bus and exclaimed that I had forgotten
to cook the snails! I looked at Welshy for a clue as to what to do. He said something
that I think sums up what we are all about. ‘It’s your passengers first and
possibly only time in Paris and they will never have an opportunity to eat
snails under the Eiffel tower again, but it’s your choice.’
As crew we come in and out of
these cities every couple of months. We can become blasé to some of their
wonders. We can become tired in cities that never let us sleep, we have the opportunity
to skip places in walking tours that we find boring, or to skip a day stop that
is difficult to drive to due to flooded roads. I had the opportunity to be lazy
and not pull my burners back out to cook the snails in the rain but I
remembered who’s holiday it was and out came the pans.
We weren’t even late in the end
due to good traffic and miraculously the sun came out for the first time that
day, even though it was just for 45 minutes it was all we needed to enjoy our
picnic. The praise from my hungry passengers made the stress of the day
worthwhile. And hearing their stories of wandering through the first of their
great European cities reminded me again of the point of the job.
I finally washed my nerves away
with a glass of wine at the Cabaret that night. Crew members from several trips
sat in the balcony seats and unloaded their own first day horror stories as topless
sequin clad girls sang in French below us and I was able to relax (before going
back to the campsite to continue making lunch for the next day). It was only
the first day but so far Brian’s prediction was right.
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