While on the Mein Schiff cruise liner, David Schembri found out that the buffet is more than a meal option; it’s a way of life.

There is something mysterious about the buffet. The offer of unlimited food for a fixed price must have been cooked by some crafty entrepreneur who thought that possibly, surely, they would make a profit because the majority would not be able to eat above their weight.

However, that entrepreneur had probably never been to Malta.

What’s funny in our case, or at least my DNA, is that once that threshold has been superseded, I feel a compelling, moral imperative to try everything once and get as much of it as I possibly can.

Which is why, with hindsight, taking on the offer of a cruise on the Mein Schiff last September when I was supposed to be on a diet was, in all likelihood, dietetic blasphemy.

The lovechild of German tour operator Tui and Royal Caribbean, the Mein Schiff is a giant cruise ship made by Germans for Germans and gave the ship a name which translates literally into “My Ship”. In German, obviously.

The name had attracted jibes in the German media, but as they say, any publicity is good publicity and the cruise ship has proven very popular with the market in the Fatherland, and probably for good reason.

The cruise I was on was a Scandinavian three-day trip, taking passengers from the harbour city of Kiel, Germany, to Copenhagen, Denmark, up the fjords to Oslo and down to Hamburg.

Upon arrival to the ship in the unassuming Kiel harbour, I was famished. I blame this particular instance for what happened after.

We were told that the Anckelmansplatz restaurant (I didn’t get the name at the time; was too hungry) would be serving food, and indeed it was.

The selection was quite vast, but on that particular day I found myself oddly drawn to a certain creamy soup, some German bread topped with salmon (a concoction of mine) and some waffles thrown in for good measure at the end. The restaurant also had a house pilsneron tap, which was actually quite good.

Apart from having a moral obligation towards food, I also happen to have that same obligation to potential pictures, sights and experiences, which meant that while on the ship I had a swim in the North Sea and tried out a sauna, surrounded by naked people staring into the horizon as the room filled with heat.

As “My Ship” was waiting in the exotic (in my opinion, at least) harbour of Kiel, with seagulls floating through the air and orange cranes staring at me from the other side of the harbour, I took out my telephoto lens and shot away – as one does.

Back inside the room, which I was to share with someone I had only met that day, there were no particular gripes to contend with, and the interior decor, as with the rest of the ship, was elegant and understated, with the welcome addition of a Nespresso machine.

The television set is a modern LCD panel, which most of the time only speaks German (so that means no movies on demand unless you plan on refining your German listening skills while on holiday) but which can still receive the major news channels.

After having had a meal which arrogantly defied everything which was on my eating plan, it was soon time to sample the main restaurant, the Atlantik, where the fare on offer and the service were excellent.

Forgive me for not remembering the details of the five-course meal we had, but I can imagine having to pay over €40 for that kind of food and not feeling sorry in a restaurant. But that’s purely based on my imagination, as silver-service restaurants are hardly my haunt at all.

The following morning, after a buffet breakfast at the Atlantik (I still hadn’t tired of eating), we descended into Copenhagen, where our group, made up of tour agents and journalists, was taken on a tour of the city and where my camera’s shutter count increased drastically.

I somehow managed to go round a canal tour, take a long walk through the city centre, follow the advice of a friendly lady called Catherine who told me to venture further across the river, the banks of which I walked across, have a Carlsberg at an Irish pub and walk back to the canal. With an hour or so to go before the ship left port, I thought a visit to the Christiania commune would be in place.

I entered a bar called the Moonfisher, which proudly boasts of being the safest bar in the world, with “over 6,000 armed police raids since 2004”, whence I hurriedly took a cinnamon swirl and a cappuccino.

As an aside: cyclists in Copenhagen know their place – there are signs all over and proper lanes, making bikes a very viable means of transport.

The next day I woke up in paradise, or rather in a Norwegian fjord on the way to Oslo, which is where I went wild and tried to visit as many museums as I could lay my eyes on, including the folk museum, a mini-Norwegian village the Viking Ship museum (which is where I saw two proper, menacing Viking ships in wood) and the Nobel peace prize museum, went for a walk in the park and gave a kroner to an enterprising tramp, who offered me a slice of his tepid pizza in return.

You probably want to hear more about the ship. My favourite part of the ship is the Himmel & Meer lounge, where in my ideal world I would have just crawled into a bean bag and stayed reading. The only problem with this, however, is that in the night time, the disco is right next door, so it’s hardly quiet.

It is clean, the service is good and all in all, if you’re German it’s just about perfect. If you’re not German and you’re Maltese, however, it is also perfect, as with the “ultra-all-inclusive” concept the ship is now operating on (sadly, when I was on it this wasn’t the case), around 99 per cent (my figure) of all restaurants, branded drinks and cocktails are included in the price, which potentially means you’d be too occupied getting your money’s worth to notice. There’s also a sauna included in the price.

About the swim in the North Sea – I technically swam on the North Sea. The third day was spent at sea, and I decided to have a dip in the (unheated) pool, while all stared amusedly.

As the rule of the buffet goes – one has to try everything at least once.

• Mr Schembri travelled on board Mein Schiff courtesy of Cruises International.