#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

#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

#631 Food, Food, Food

We're eating our way across northern Europe.

HAMBURG: The Old Commercial Room for labskaus and more

GDANSK: Gingerbread at Gotyk House, the oldest producer of gingerbread in Poland

GDANSK: Pierogi Ruskie at Velevetka Restaurant

KLAIPEDA: Potato pancakes (Blynai) with Svytury's beer.

KLAIPEDA: Chilled beetroot soup, potatoes, Svytury's beer

 TALLINN: Goat cheese and potato casserole with Saku beer.

 TALLINN: Pork roast with sauerkraut, the traditional Christmas meal.

Yours in fine fare,
Mary

#629 St. Mary's churches

You'll find a St. Mary's Church in Gdansk, Poland and a St. Mary's Church in Rostock, Germany.

These 2 churches are hard for me to tell apart.  They have the same name.  They are both large brick gothic buildings built in the 14th century.  They both house an astronomical clock

 St. Mary's Church in Rostock

 Rostock astronomical clock.

St. Mary's Church in Gdansk claims to be the largest brick church in the world.

 Gdansk astronomical clock

Yours in wondering just how many bricklayers and clockmakers there were in the 14th century,
Mary

#628 Rostock libraries

"Bibliotheken rechnen sich nicht, aber sie zahlen sich aus" translates roughly to "libraries do not pay for themselves, but they do pay off."

I learned this when I wandered into the beautiful Rostock stadtbibliothek, aka the Rostock city library.

The Rostock librarian and I bonded when she confided that she, too, visits libraries on her travels. 

In the city park, we came across another special library.  You can take a book.  You can give a book.  You can borrow a book.  

Yours in appreciating libraries at every turn,
Mary

#626 Cunard Sisters

Today, we spied the third of the Cunard sisters, the MS Queen Victoria when the MV Explorer pulled into the seaside resort of Warnemunde, Germany at 0800. 

Just 4 days ago, we saw the second sister, the MS Queen Elizabeth, pulling into a dry dock in Hamburg.  And last August, we sailed on the first sister, the RMS Queen Mary 2.

Seeing the third sister today was an unexpected thrill especially when the ferry from Warnemunde to Rostock gave us this nose-to-nose view of the MS Queen Victoria and the MV Explorer. 

Yours in sisterhood,
Mary

#624 St Michael's in Hamburg

From just about anywhere in the city of Hamburg, you can see the spire of St. Michael's church and today we proved it.

We walked all over the city and used this landmark to get our bearings just as the captains of the ships sailing up the Elbe. Even while indoors at the Miniature Wonderland, we spied St. Michael's church - the miniature version.

During the afternoon, we visited the church interior just in time to hear the choir sing This Little Light of Mine.  We climbed to the top of the St. Michael's tower for breathtaking views of the city and the river.  We tried to find the MV Explorer docked in HafenCity but it has not yet arrived from Bremerhaven 

We finished our day by returning to the church and walking across the street to the Old Commercial Room to dine on pickled herring, labskaus, and Hefeweizen.

Yours with an eye on the tower,
Mary

#623 The Sea is Calling

We're off on another nautical adventure, but first we have to get ourselves to Hamburg.

For our trip, we're relying on Iceland Air to fly us from Dulles to Reykjavik to Hamburg, but wait.  Uh oh.  What's this?  Pilots Union: Biggest Travel Season in Danger.   An Iceland Air pilot's strike?  Lucky for us, we miss the strike by one day and fly just south of Greenland on the way to Reykjavik. and we land as scheduled in Hamburg.   

Now that we've completed the aeronautical leg of our journey, it's time to turn our attention to the nautical portion.  Hamburg, as we discovered last August, is about as nautical as it gets.

Today, we are lucky to witness the Queen Elizabeth 2 sailing up the Elbe River and pulling into a Blohm and Voss dry dock for its first overhaul since entering service in 2010.

The MV Explorer is also in dry dock at a Blohm and Voss shipyard (her birthplace) getting some routine maintenance, engine-, ventilation- and steel repairs (superstructure, tanks), fresh water sys, rudder, propeller, pipes, ventilation, deck improvements (new tiles and carpets in public spaces).  All this is according to http://www.shipcruise.org/cruise-ship-refurbishment-dry-dock-schedule/.

So the MV Explorer will be all ready for us when we board on Saturday.

Yours in anticipation,
Mary

#581 Europe's small towns

Thinking about the first seven ports of our fall voyage, we discover that we enjoy getting out of the big cities to explore the small towns and the countryside.

From Saint Petersburg, we travel to Vyborg and walk Monrepos Park.

From Hamburg, we travel to Lubeck and marvel at the Holsten gate.

From Antwerp, we travel to Bruges and admire the canals in The Venice of the North.

From Le Havre, we travel to Honfleur and its beautiful harbor.

From Dublin, we travel to Howth and hike the exhilarating cliff walk.

From Lisbon, we travel to Sintra and walk through fog at Pena National Palace.

From Cadiz, we travel to Ronda right up to the edge of its dramatic cliffs.

 

Yours in this small-town girl loving the small-townness of Vyborg, Lubeck, Bruges, Honfleur, Howth, Sintra, and Ronda,
Mary