My daily routine in the center of boredom

Kia ora, my dear readers!

First of all, I have a small request for you. Since I am currently taking a break from traveling, I would be happy if you could let me know how you liked my reports so far, if you would do anything differently, what you found good or particularly interesting, etc. You can write it here as a comment or contact me through other digital channels. I want to write as good reports as possible and can use any help :)

As promised, I'll bring you up to date on my job in Blenheim, where I work in viticulture, since November 11th. In Germany, people start celebrating on that day, for me, work begins. The irony of fate ;)

The day before, I arrived in Blenheim from Nelson on the Intercity bus, unfortunately in rainy weather. And that, even though Blenheim is supposed to be the sunniest place in all of New Zealand. When I arrived at my hostel, my home for probably the next six weeks, Kevin, the owner of Peacehaven Working Hostel, already had a job for me: vineyard work. So the next morning we could start. As I said before, Peacehaven is a working hostel. This means that you live there and the owner helps you find possible employers. The rooms have either four or six beds and consist of double beds and shelves. So they are very simply furnished. You have to buy and cook your own food, which unfortunately costs quite a bit in New Zealand :/

In my case, the employer was Ace Viticulture. After hearing about some of the experiences of other hostel residents in their jobs, I can only say that I was lucky with the assignment. Ace mainly consists of Asian employees. The working hours are usually from 8:00 am (pick up is at 7:30 am) until 4:30 pm. You have a total of one hour break, with the first break being paid, so you get paid for eight hours if the weather permits. If it rains too heavily, work is either stopped or not started at all. So there were days with only three hours of work, especially at the beginning when it rained every day, and one day work started with a three-hour delay. Meanwhile, the weather has changed from wet and cold to summery warm and it is over 25°C during the day, with uninterrupted sunshine. However, I haven't really started sweating yet. I will tell you why in a moment. Everyone has to wear an orange safety vest while working. Unfortunately, I don't know exactly what that is for. Otherwise, you can wear whatever you want. The supervisors are relatively easygoing. Sometimes they scold or give speeches to the whole group that too many mistakes are being made, some work too slowly, and that you will be sent home for certain rule violations. They have also threatened that if you make too many mistakes, you will have to make up the work unpaid and fix the mistakes. But so far, it has all been empty threats. If they see that you are doing something wrong, they call you over and explain the mistake to you, but I have never seen anyone fired to this day. However, the control of whether you are doing your work correctly is rarely and only superficially done. The younger supervisors are the most conscientious and can sometimes come across as overly meticulous. But the older ones seem to be more or less indifferent to everything. However, it is also difficult to keep an eye on a group of up to 60 people with three supervisors, with the number of workers varying greatly. I have experienced everything from 15 to 60 workers.

The grape harvest here in New Zealand is not at its peak until April, so unfortunately I am not allowed to pick grapes. So far, my job can be easily summed up. On the first day, I thought to myself: this could be fun. It was called bud rubbing. You have to cut off all the leaves and buds from each plant from a certain height, which is quite straining on the thighs and back :/ But after that, it became much more relaxed. Since the end of the first day of work, I have only performed one task: sweeping. This is really extremely relaxed because you do everything standing up. You have to adjust the leaves of the plants to the wires around each plant according to a certain pattern. The whole thing is of course very, very monotonous and can get quite boring. Fortunately, you are allowed to listen to music with one ear while working. That fits quite well because the songs on my phone have a total running time that is very close to the daily working time. So I can listen to each song almost exactly once a day :) But today we actually did something new: wire lifting. You have to hook the wires into certain brackets. We were told that this will probably continue until Christmas. It is even easier than sweeping because it is difficult to make any mistakes ;) Since it is much faster, I think we will be traveling to different rows of vines several times a day from now on. We have only worked on one row of vines every day. You earn about 16.50 NZD per hour, but 12.3% of it is deducted for taxes, which means that in the final calculation you end up with just under 10€. On some days, we are also offered to work a little longer. In theory, it can go up to eleven hours. This is actually quite lucrative because Blenheim is probably one of the most boring cities in the country and the work is really not physically demanding. In the evening, there is hardly anything to do. When I come home, I usually cook something to eat, take a shower, chat a bit, and then go to my room or go shopping, which I have to do about three times a week. Some people sit outside or in the kitchen for a long time and smoke or play drinking games, but I'm not interested in that. Of course, most of the residents here are German. No surprise ;) The kitchen is actually not so bad. The chairs are run-down (many without backrest, old, dirty), but there are three stoves, three ovens, and three refrigerators. There is a big table in the middle, but if the weather is good, most people eat on the wooden benches outside. On arrival, everyone is given a box with plates, bowls, cups, knives, forks, and spoons. You have to take care of everything else yourself. There is also a TV, but it was broken during the big earthquake here :D We felt the earthquake here quite clearly, even though the epicenter was in Kaikoura. Everyone ran outside immediately because they were afraid that the hostel would collapse. But nothing happened, except that work was canceled the next day mainly because of the tsunami warning.

On Sunday, I went for a walk in Wither Hills Farm Park, the hilly landscape that starts right on the outskirts of the city. There were very green hills with few trees and the view from the top was already worth it. Although it was exhausting to walk there first and then uphill for ages :D But the paths were in good condition. The weather was sunny, but fortunately not too hot. I was almost completely alone and I think I saw seven or eight people during the whole hike. From the top, you have a nice, wide view over the whole of Blenheim. There is also the Taylor River, which is very, very clear, flows through the city, and has a few nice spots on the banks. But nothing spectacular.

I hope you also read this report with interest and are looking forward to the next one! It will be coming soon and I will tell you how work is going and whether something exciting has happened here, even though it doesn't seem like it at the moment ;)

See you soon,

your Max