I Washed A Million Knives & Forks, And I loved It.

Our fire brigade had it's annual Frühschoppen yesterday.

Look, it pays to have a good dish washing liquid and some kindly soul organized a bottle of the finest organic type ( clearly a former holder of my station ). Bob and most of the team had a specific station assigned and I bravely ( or stupidly ) volunteered for the grunge work. How bad could it possibly be, I thought...

The fire chief put me as a floater into the coffee & cake corner. Little did I know, that it was also the only other corner apart from the bar-corner that had an industrial sized washing up station. Note: Washing up station, not a dishwasher! At first it was easy work. A fork here and a knife there with a odd coffee cup in between. I should have known why they call it the calm before the storm.

Luckily, there were at least three other volunteers at this station. One brought the dirty things, one dried and one re-wrapped the cutlery for the next use. All the while two other team members of
" Coffee & Beyond " made and served coffee. When I think of it now, the day went smoothly without any hiccups or territorial issues!

The whole day, my sink saw action. At times major action. Washing a fork & knife ( if you say it quickly it sounds different!!! ) is not as easy as wiping a plate and naturally I wanted to do a good job. Imagine if I got a negative review on my fork cleaning skills! Quelle horreur...

At one of the calm & under control moments, a moment with maybe ten sets of cutlery in my sink, the fire chief came towards us with a box of something while grinning from ear to ear. Immediately I thought that we were getting something to eat / drink or a present. Oh no, it was a box filled with delectable used cutlery and he dumped all there was inside it into the sink. Even my soap suds & clean hot water got a bit of a shock. The soap suds disappeared in horror and all of a sudden all I could see was a mountain full of dirty fork & knives. Not floating about, but building a tower of sorts.

Honestly, my back ached from being a tad too tall for this sink, my fingers had numerous stab encounters with a few prongs ( thank goodness the knives proved that adage correct. You know, that one about never getting a sharp knife when you eat out ) and the mountain of cutlery seemed to be never ending....but I loved being a part of this " Coffee & Beyond " team. Before you feel bad for my day of washing dishes, there were far harder stations in the hall: the waiters, servers, the kitchen, bar staff and the team providing the clean glasses ( Bob & Johannes ). Not a mean feat, when it was so hot and the beer and wine were the clear favourites.

When the last Schnitzel and roast pork had been sold, our station slowly got ahead of our workload and the sink empty & clean. We ladies dropped our forks ( not quite the pitch-forks ), took off our aprons and marched to the bar station, demanding a glass of wine and cheekily took a spare bottle with us to sit outside under a shady tree. After the first few sips of this fabulous wine
( made by one lady in our team ) we forgot any and all of the hard work and just had a great time unwinding, chatting and laughing. It was a privilege for me to have been included in the day. I can't wait for next year's event and hopefully I will remember to take some rubber gloves along...

All day I was thinking that this week we will only eat with our fingers at home! But then I remembered:

Bob does the dishes and I do the cooking...

Biggi