#736 The Dream Ship In Transition

For Semester at Sea, the start of the fall semester involves more than enrolling students, hiring faculty, and choosing an itinerary. It also involves blue paint.

Lots of blue paint.

Semester at Sea uses the same ship for the fall and spring semesters. But each summer, the ship sails with German cruise passengers under the name MV Deutschland. We've blogged about the Deutschland, well-known for its recurring role in a popular television series, Das Traumship, ("The Dream Ship") where she carries a green and white color scheme.

So to make the transition every fall Semester at Sea calls in a specialized painting crew with cranes, lifts, and long-handled paint brushes who set about converting the green and white MV Deutschland to the blue and white MV World Odyssey.

In Hamburg, our embarkation port for Fall 2018, we witnessed the transformation to quickly cover the summer's Deutschland green with SAS blue, stencil on the Semester at Sea logo, and re-brand the MV World Odyssey.

Yours in transition,
Kelly 

#735 Hamburg Architecture

We're struck again by Hamburg's creative architecture - so many beautiful contrasts.

The city sits on a sheltered natural harbor which has brought us back for a third visit.  With so many rivers and canals, Hamburg has more bridges (~2,500) within its city limits than any other city in the world.

The new concert hall, Elbphilharmonie, is an architectural statement that opened last year, mirroring an ocean wave on the Elbe River.  Tickets were impossible to get during our stay, but we admire the view from all angles.    

 

And from the observation deck on the 8th floor between the original brick warehouse below and the new glass concert hall above, we appreciate the view of church spires in the background and a mix of the old and new.

The city keeps coming back from disasters such as the 1842 Hamburg fire, World War 2 bombing runs, and coastal flooding.  This 1888 building continues to thrive.   

And the tower of St. Nicholas' church continues to stand despite being a focus of World War 2 bombers.

The Ubersee Quartier subway station near our hotel has an underwater theme with darker blue tiles at the bottom. 

And the fabulous design continues indoors as well.  At the Hamburg arts and crafts museum, we admire and are mesmerized by the Spiegel Canteen designed by Verner Panton.

From the Altona cruise terminal, we will board the MV World Odyssey later today. 

Today, the view from our 25Hours hotel room shows another huge harbor project underway.

Yours in appreciating Hamburg all the way around,
Mary Jo

#734 Getting there

Getting there is half the fun!

When you travel from North America to another continent, you have two options for travel: flying on an airplane or sailing on a ship. 

We choose sailing for lots of reasons.

1) Since we don't leave the surface of the Earth when sailing, we have the opportunity to understand better where we are by slowly approaching a new destination at 20 mph rather than zooming overhead at 500 mph and dropping in from the heavens.

2) The ocean is beautiful. The sun on the ocean is beautiful. The moon on the ocean is beautiful.  

3) The ship has a library! And the Queen Mary 2 library, the largest at sea, has just the right books to get our attention: Dear Mrs. Bird and Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society for me and The Art of Cartographics for Kelly.  The librarians even check them out for reading on the deck.

4) And then, there's the people factor.  Those who make the deliberate choice to travel at 20 mph are not in a hurry.  They like to promenade around the deck, read in the deck chair, take time for a conversation.  These are my people.  On our recent Atlantic crossing, we were overjoyed to be joined by two lifetime friends. And when those friends introduce us to their two friends, we form immediate connections and the crossing (and life) become even sweeter.      

Yours in sticking to the surface of the planet whenever possible,
Mary Jo

P.S. I haven't even mentioned the dancers.

#733 It's a Small World

The world just isn't that big and the shipping industry ties us all together.

We often see Hamburg Sud containers loaded on rail cars passing our historic Aurora train depot in Missouri, 4,714 miles from their home in northern Europe.

Even since this little guy came into our lives, we pay extra close attention to these trains coming to town.  Sometimes we stop and watch so we can see just who (JB Hunt, Hamburg Sud) is rolling by.

Hamburg Sud, mercifully short for Hamburg Südamerikanische Dampfschifffahrts-Gesellschaft ApS & Co KG, ranks among the ten largest container shipping brands and is part of Denmark's Maersk Line, the world’s largest container shipping company. It employs 25,000 on land and 7,000 seafarers on 800 vessels.  [from Wikipedia]

In 2008, we spotted this Maersk ship in the Baltic Sea.

And in 2014, we found this Maersk container welcoming us back to our ship, the MV Explorer, after a day spent exploring Isafjordur, Iceland.

Yours in following the shipping lines from our home to the world,
Mary Jo

#732 The MV World Odyssey, The Dream Ship

 SEMESTER AT SEA SHIP HISTORY

MS Seven Seas, 1963-1966
SS Ryndam, 1966-1971
SS Universe, 1971-1995
SS Universe Explorer, 1996-2004
MV Explorer, 2004-2015
MV World Odyssey, 2015-present

During our previous Semester at Sea voyages when the program was sponsored by the University of Virginia, the MV Explorer was our shipboard home for more than 500 days/nights.  We have a gazillion photos of this modern ship built in 2001 but the beautifully photographed article in Maritime Matters is the place to go to best understand the contemporary style of our previous home.

MV Explorer

The MV World Odyssey is the sixth shipboard home of the SAS program and we are eager to see it up close this fall.  In 1998, she was built in Kiel, Germany - just north of our embarkation point in Hamburg.

MV World Odyssey

We have a lot to learn about our new ship, but we already know that she has a cinematic history. The German television show Das Traumschiff ("The Dream Ship"), based off the American TV series "The Love Boat", was filmed on board for 15 years.  Fans of The Dream Ship have the opportunity to sail during the summer when the MV World Odyssey is not used for SAS.  It would be fun to sail on The Love Boat, ie, the Pacific Princess, but it was decommissioned and taken apart for recycling in 2013.

I've done some serious cinematic research of films set on ocean liners, so I'm happy to have found this cinematic connection with the MV World Odyssey.  For the official results of my research, see my Top 20 Films at Sea and even More Films at Sea. Spoiler alert: My favorite is One Way Passage, 1932.

Yours in dreaming of The Dream Ship,
Mary Jo

#731 Deck to Patio

Converting the deck to a patio is a BIG project!

Thank goodness we have friends and family to help.  When we find the ideal limestone ledge rock at a farm auction south of Aurora last fall, we win the bid for a whopping $50 and start planning a patio.

With the help of our nephew, his skid loader and trailer, the ledge rock is soon residing at our home. Some say the pile of rock even begins to taunt us as we take our time planning our course of action.

The large, well-constructed, 2-level, wooden deck was built by the homeowners two times removed and was starting to show its age.

In removing the deck, we work toward three goals: reduce annual maintenance, increase yard space, and expose the rock foundation on the east side of the house.  We get to work removing the wooden structure with the help of our friend Randall. 

And we find a good home for the lumber too!

We borrow our nephew's hydraulic Deweze hay truck to help extract the deck posts.

And voila!  The wooden deck is gone.

A lot of work is needed on the former-coal-chute-turned-basement-window now revealed by the removal of the deck.  The plywood window covering is replaced with masonry and glass blocks.  The dryer vent, electricity, and sump drain are re-routed through the glass block. 

We are happy to learn that our great-nephew excels at washing basement windows.

Finally, we get to examine those individual pieces of ledge rock up close and personal as we figure out the puzzle of making them fit, lay them down, and make sure each one is level with a slight tip away from the house. 

After we fill in some gravel around the rocks and dirt around the patio,

it's time to enjoy a well-deserved hot dog - on the patio, of course.

Yours in appreciating family and friends in our transition from deck to patio,
Mary Jo

#730 Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again

Mamma Mia, here we go again!  

My my, how can I resist you?  

Mamma mia, does it show again?  

My my, just how much I've missed you"

The two of us are sailing again with Semester at Sea and we couldn't be happier!

In the fall of 2006, we first met up with Semester at Sea, a study-abroad program that sails around the world, and we fell in love with the eye-opening combination of education and world travel.  This fall, we're sailing on our fifth academic voyage to 11 countries over 107 days with about 500 undergraduate students.

We will spend about half of those 107 days at sea.  That's when classes are held and I will be working as the voyage librarian.  The other half of those 107 days will be spent in port, exploring countries in Europe, Africa, and Asia.  Mamma mia, librarianship has been very, very good to me.

It's impossible to share the many fun things that happen during a voyage so I'll offer just one highlight from our 2008 voyage that I've been remembering of late. (And it pairs well with the subject of this blog post.) While we were docked in Greece, our shipboard family (the two of us plus our two shipboard daughters) navigated our way to a local theater to see the just-released Mamma Mia!

On every voyage, we're given the opportunity to form a shipboard family with students who opt in and it's added greatly to our experience.  We're already looking forward to meeting the newest members of our growing family.

This fall will be our first time to sail on the MV World Odyssey, a 20-year-old cruise ship that is decorated in the 1920s style and still used during the summer months for cruises. Though we will always love the MV Explorer, the previous SAS ship, we're eager to see our fall home in person. 

Yours in gratitude to ABBA and Semester at Sea,
Mary Jo