On the bridge of the Andros Queen, Captain Panagiotis, the ship’s mate, returns from the kitchen satisfied, saying “the ship’s joy is the cook”! A crew member corrects him. He laughs, accepting the correction. And we take a photo of the bridge crew and go to the garage…
Returning from Andros to Rafina in the afternoon. We take a seat by the window, look at the sea, remember the morning’s promise, and go up to the bridge. We assume Captain Panagiotis will have forgotten the morning’s conversation. However, as soon as he sees us, he gets excited and says: “let’s go to the kitchen, the cook is waiting for us—!” We follow him inside, to the ship’s kitchen. And we meet Christoforos Vlamis, the ship’s head chef…
Christoforos is a strapping man. From Stenies! He is 40 years old and has been traveling and cooking for 8 whole years. For 9 months a year he cooks every day. The kitchen is his kingdom. The crew is his world. His kitchen, the officers’ coffee room, and the crew’s mess are his space. He loves what he does. He started cooking at his uncle’s taverna, Giorgos Ballas’s, in Stenies. And from Stenies, he embarked on the ships of the Stefanou brothers.
He is very satisfied with what he does. Cooking and the kitchen are both his hobby and his job. He cooks for 45 people every day, 7 days a week. And he likes it. How many people can say they like what they do? Christoforos is one of them. And he feels happy that the Stefanou brothers with their ships gave him the opportunity.
But the crew also feels equally happy, as seen in the photo above, and as the most sociable of those present explains, choked up. And we conclude with what Captain Panagiotis said at the beginning of the narrative: “the cook is the ship’s joy”…
SOURCE: enandro.gr
