With music, everything is possible

Have you ever wondered what happens when 50 people are aboard one ship? Right! It gets dirty quickly. No one knows where the dirt comes from because while we are sailing, nobody leaves the ship. Yet, everything gets dirty in no time, so we have to clean every day.

For that, the ship is divided into four sections. The messroom and hallway, the cargohold, the deck and last but not least, the sanitary facilities. Each watch is assigned one of these four areas for one week. Every Sunday, we rotate.

After one week of cleaning one station, we are ending the week on Saturdays with “Cleaning the ship massively”, also known as “Happy Hours”. During those two hours, every watch has to do their daily chores and clean their assigned area even more meticulously. For example, every Saturday, we not only mop the floor, but also clean the fridge in the messroom and the sideboard in which the games are stored. Two hours are a long time, so to keep up the mood, we are allowed to listen to our own music loudly. Music boxes and well-chosen songs quickly lead to about ten people screaming the lyrics just a little bit too loudly. While singing to “ABBA” or “Die Ärzte”, I sometimes almost forget that I am cleaning the toilets, and I start having fun. After the two hours of intense cleansing, the ship council checks if everything has been done properly. If the ship is not tidy enough, we must do it again. After all, it is super important to have a clean home!

As you might be able to imagine, some chores are somewhat disgusting, such as taking care of the drains in the sanitary facility and galley, because it smells badly and you can find every kind of dirt in there. Like many places, we have a system for the cleaning cloths: red is for the toilets, yellow for everything that is connected to food, white is for the floors, and blue or green ones are for the walls and everything else. That is because we do not want to clean our tables and toilets with the same cloths!

Yesterday, we cleaned the Thor all day long because every six months, the ship must do a hygiene test which is very hard to pass. Especially things that have anything to do with food are important. We were not even allowed to store snacks in our cabins! The galley, the sanitary facilities, and other places like the mess hall are also very important, so we cleaned some parts in those areas with toothpicks and cotton buds. Let me tell you: that can keep you occupied for a long time! I was one of the lucky persons to clean the boxes in the dry storage and to reorganize them.

My favorite station is definitely cleaning the deck, because you are outside, you can feel the warm sun on your skin, and you can also still hear the music of the galley. I am actually pretty surprised by myself, because I have felt happy doing this work, even though I would not clean my cabin that often if I would not be forced to do it. Still, when we have to clean the ship massively every Saturday, I forget that I am usually grateful for it. Uops…