Pizza Wunderbar

It's taking a while, but we're slowly starting to make money. The first day at the pizza factory wasn't very successful. We arrived in the morning and had an introduction where we were explained the emergency procedures (instead of fire, it's earthquake) and how to dress, etc. So, we went into the factory wearing super sexy oversized white lab coats and hairnets. We worked in the base room. It's divided into a chilled room where the pizzas are topped and packaged, and a very hot room where the pizzas are baked.

Hannah started working on a machine that works a bit like a tennis ball machine, but with pizza dough. Well, technically it's a sort of slide where the pizza dough slides down, and then it needs to be stacked into 6, 8, or 10 stacks. However, they come down so fast that many gloves tore and we actually had abrasions. While Hannah worked there, I assembled mini pizzas, sticking them together and adding the expiration date and barcode. That was in the chilled room. After a 10-minute break, we moved on to another job - stacking the separate pizza bases that come out of a different oven and pushing them in front of fans to cool off before they are packed and put into the cold storage. I did that for two hours until I started feeling worse. I spent my lunch break over the toilet - my circulation had decided to leave.

To work with food, you have to be free of vomiting and diarrhea for 24 hours, and I wasn't anymore, so I had to go home. That was at 12 o'clock, we started at 8. So after four hours of work, we left (Hannah was feeling bad too) and spent the rest of the day at the mall and the campground. We both downloaded Harry Potter on our phones (a pretty dumb game by the way) and spent a lot of time playing it here.

The next day, we explored a beach nearby - Sumner Beach. The weather got warmer again and we had a few nice hours there.

The next day, the temp agency called us. They needed waiters for an event. Unfortunately, with a dress code that we couldn't comply with using our backpacker equipment. So instead, we got a new Warrant of Fitness (NZ's equivalent of TÜV) - also funny: after the inspection, he said that my headlights were cracked (obviously!), I needed an oil change if I was going to drive a lot, and something else. I got new wipers and he polished my broken headlights and I got the WOF. I would never have passed an inspection like that in Germany. Anyway, then we went to the art museum here in Christchurch. My favorite exhibition was Us vs. Them. But I already forgot who it was by.

But there were a few other cool exhibitions too.

Among them was an exhibition called 'Yellow Moon'. Basically, visitors had to crochet a crater, and all these craters would be sewn together to form a big moon. I had tried to learn how to crochet before, but I never had the patience to really learn it. I tried again and it actually worked this time! It's not the most beautiful crater, but at least it's round. I wanted to show it to the employee when she asked me how I liked the exhibitions. But she took it from me because they wanted to sew it into the moon - well, at least I'm part of an artwork, haha.

We spent the rest of the day killing time and in the evening we went back to the museum to take photos of the neon signs.

On Sunday, we had really nice weather and we went to the Riccarton Rotary Sunday Market. In the end, it was a big flea market that takes place every Sunday at a racecourse. There were some cool things, but money is tight at the moment, so it was more of a nice walk. Then we enjoyed the sun at the campground.

On Monday, we went back to the pizza factory. This time, we ate and drank enough and managed to work the entire shift. We also got to work there on Tuesday and have now worked at every station. The finished dough is put into a machine that shapes and punches the dough into uniform balls. An employee then places all the pizza bases on a conveyor belt in groups of 5 before they go into the oven. Either the bases are then transported from the oven to another room via a long conveyor belt until they come out on that stupid slide again, or they have to be manually taken out of the oven by an employee and placed on trays (the job that made me feel sick). From there, the bases are collected into stacks by another employee and transported into the cold storage. Depending on the plan for the bases, they are either fully cooled and then sealed (super machine ... always breaking down) or taken to the chilled room where a machine tops the pizza, but then they have to be collected by employees from the conveyor belt and placed in plastic holes, which are then sealed with a lid and ready for the stores. Other pizzas are only sealed and put into cardboard packaging by a machine - which has to be unfolded by employees first. And that's how frozen pizza is made - a bit like being a Galileo reporter.

But hygiene doesn't seem to be a big concern here. There are these great lab coats and hats and beard guards that make you look like you're about to have your appendix removed, but in the kitchen, there was a sign saying that this clothing was only introduced AFTER customers complained about finding hair in their pizzas ... plus the gloves they wear are those cheap blue ones that tear just by looking at them.

They also seem quite relaxed about production numbers here. At the end of a shift, they count how much was done, and more or less will be produced the next day accordingly. Nobody is in a rush here and everyone works at a very comfortable pace, charging their phones at random machines and all the things that would never happen in Germany. At least now we always see the pizzas in the store that we helped produce.

Since yesterday, we've been out of work again, and after I wrote a few more job applications, we wanted to drive to the meadow where Mariska (from the previous post) has her horses. We wanted to walk the riding route again because the sun sets over the lagoon - but we didn't find the lagoon, instead we found a pretty nice beach.

One other thing we did was visit the 185 white chairs, which are a memorial for the 2011 earthquake. By the way, there was no major earthquake while we were here, but there was one in 2010 and one in 2011. People are always shocked and think I witnessed the earthquakes when I talk about them...

We also visited the white crosses, which represent the New Zealanders who died in World War II. The holiday for that has already passed, but I just got a picture of it now.