#740 Neptune Day 2018

Our Fall 2018 voyage crosses two lines at the same time, the Equator and the Prime Meridian.

For a moment off the coast of Ghana, we float across latitude 0, longitude 0.

Green King Neptune, Queen Minerva, and their costumed court celebrate this maritime event by initiating a pitiful flock of first-time equator-crossers, derisively known as pollywogs 😏, thereby bestowing upon them the prestigious title Emerald Shellback.

The Royal Barber is on duty, keen for head shaving.

And of course, fish kissing is required.

Yours in enjoying maritime tradition,
Kelly

#739 Global Mamas

In Ghana, we spent an inspiring day with Global Mamas.

Previous Semester at Sea voyagers raved about Global Mamas, the Ghanaian fair-trade cooperative started by eight women in 2003. We've seen Global Mamas handcrafted products from Ghana for sale in a shop down the street from our home in Indianapolis so we know the Mamas have grown to be a worldwide creative community. But we want to know more.

So while in Ghana, we visit both the Global Mamas store in Accra and their modest facility in Cape Coast where we learn about their 350 producers from 7 communities all in Ghana supporting local entrepreneurial women and their families.

Then come their products, beautiful and useful.

But when Global Mama Mary Koomson takes us to her batik workshop things get really interesting.

Sponge patterns. Organic cotton. Natural dies. Brilliant colors. Drying sunshine. We have so much respect for the hard work and skill invested in making batik fabric! 

We come away impressed with Mary Koomson's fine craftsmanship and much better clothed. 

Yours in Ghana,

Kelly

#738 Solving a Canary Islands Mystery

Why did we spend part of one day on our Fall 2018 voyage of Semester at Sea aboard the MV World Odyssey anchored off the Canary Islands' coast? 

Was it to enjoy the vibrant blue Atlantic Ocean and distant mountains backing the port city of Las Palmas deemed by one study as having "the best climate in the world"? 

Was it to view the large collection of drilling ships anchored nearby? 

It was none of these.  Instead we were there to meet a tanker ship for refueling.

But why take on fuel in this relatively remote place? Aren't 'island things' always more expensive?

I found one answer in the reference section of the MV World Odyssey library where the very last print edition (2010) of the Encyclopedia Britannica resides. In Volume 2 the entry for the Canary Islands ends with this paragraph:

"The Canary Islands manufacturing industries are small scale outside Santa Cruz de Tenerife whose petroleum refinery processes large quantities of crude oil."  

Yours in mystery solving in the library,
Kelly   

#737 Spanish Architectural Extremes

Everywhere we go we find architecture. In Spain, we find architectural extremes.

Antoni Gaudi designed a rural hillside to be an exclusive neighborhood for Barcelona's elite. But when circumstances doomed those plans, the real estate failure launched one of Barcelona's major attractions, Park Guell.  Ornate and wildly ornamented, it opened to the public in 1926.

Across town, sleek, clean, and free of ornamentation, Barcelona Pavilion, the reconstructed modernist masterpiece designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in 1928 stands in start contrast to Gaudi's naturalistic mosaics.

Steel, glass, straight lines, and horizontal floating planes exemplify Mies' architectural theme "less is more".

These two Spanish constructions are close in age only. In Barcelona, we find architectural extremes.

Yours in Spain,
Kelly 

#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.