Christmas in Germany

I watched the sun rise this morning over a city silently sleeping below the clear winter sky. At nine oclock the church bells began ringing loudly so even on the deck of my ship they could be heard. A brass ensemble from the seaman's mission came onboard to play Christmas tunes for a half an hour later in the morning and the steward put out Christmas dinner early which most of the crew slept through after last nights celebrations. Besides a Finnish ferry we are the only vessel left in the Ro/Ro basin and all the unlicensed have been given the day off from day work and watches. Tonight there is a Christmas Ball that a few of us will be attending and then at 0800 we'll sail for Antwerp to restart our load back and head for home. I can't wait to put the setting sun squarely over the port quarter. Merry Christmas.

Glühwein

Good milk is cause for celebration for anyone who loves their coffee the color of a brown paper bag. Having a store of fresh dairy in the bridge ice box is a blessing and the milk in Germany is on the top of my dairy list rivaled only by Oakhurst, a delicious hormone free brand known for fattening my brothers and I up at young ages and putting the fire out in “Burnt Trailers” all over Maine (Allen’s Coffee Brandy and whole milk that is).

I mention the “millche” here on account of its necessity in tempering the espresso shots it will take to keep me awake after yesterday’s cultural sortie up the Weser River. Choosing to go ashore after a full day’s work over sleep is a hard decision but this morning I’m left with no regrets. The shuteye I missed out on was well worth the hour long train ride out of the port and into Bremen, a city of 550,000 people on the Weser River. Together with my counterpart in the Engine Department and the always socially inclined cadet we made our way to the Christmas Market in the old city center.

We spotted the twin spires of a massive (Lutheran) church that had it’s origins in 800AD and followed them to the market square wherein hundreds of vendors had erected a temporary village for the month long Christmas Market. Glittering with holiday decorations and the sound of caroling street choirs the mood was pure Christmas everywhere you looked. There was a Santa Claus reading holiday fables to a dozen children in front of a North Pole back drop next to shops selling thousands of hand made wooden Christmas ornaments. Christmas trees were hoisted on top of roofs and utility poles and a huge fir had made it into the Church waiting for tomorrow night’s lighting service.

There was traditional German holiday fare being grilled, fried, roasted and brewed and happily consumed with complete abandonment by the young and old. The 14 inch Bratwursts were cooked over a huge circular grill and served with a comically small roll that wouldn’t accommodate a burger. This served as a grip for dipping the sausage in hot mustard. Potatoes were fried as regular straight cuts or mashed into a cake and eaten with different sauces. There were crepes and candied nuts and gingerbread galore. My favorite meal though was a bowel of garlic oiled and dill sauced mushrooms for only 2 euro.

To compliment the affordable food were twenty or so glühwein stands. This magical spiced red or white wine beverage was served hot in a mug which we were free to walk around the city with. The best drink was a variant of gluhwein whose unpronounceable name included the words fire and bowel. Cooked in huge copper pots, a brewer would flash a pan of white rum into blue flames and then carefully pour it into the kettle giving a boozy and sugared kick to the sweet red wine. After a few mugs of this the chill winter drizzle no longer seemed to matter as much.

There is something wonderfully satisfying in getting a grape buzz on as you gaze up at a 600 year old town hall (Now a UNESCO world heritage site) surrounded by crowds of merry Germans whose holiday merrymaking predates the Hanseatic League. Imagining the generations of Germanic peoples drinking hot wine in this square around Christmas time before Christ had even come into the picture is true pleasure. These rare moments when you’re whisked away from work and dropped off in another country and another culture have to be appreciated because it just doesn’t happen often enough.

A statue of ROLAND bearing Durendart, the "sword of justice" and a shield decorated with an imperial eagle.

Solstice in the North Sea

It was a long morning on watch in what seemed to be interminable darkness in the southern portion of the North Sea. I couldn’t help but work out the time of sun rise and sun set on this, the shortest day of the year. I’m sure this is to blame for my feeling like a zombie come eight o’clock just as the sky was beginning to lighten. I can’t imagine how it is for the crews of the feeder ships and work boats that never make it out of the North or Baltic Seas all winter. They must be conditioned to the long nights and short days where as I depend on the sun’s timely arrival to get a boost of energy to finish off my day.

You know you’ve reached the English Channel when all of the FM radio weather reports are tailored for sailors and goes something like this;

“Faeroe northwest 7, increasing to 8 later, poor, 3 miles in haze.”

By using only succinct marine terminology the BBC broadcasts the weather for the entire nation hourly informing mariners of the wind condition, precipitation, visibility and short term trend in short order. It reminds me how much of a seafaring nation the U.K. remains to be. Of course at the top of the hour and the end of the forecast they have to play “God Save the Queen”, the tune of which is obviously a total knock off of our ancient and most solemn patriotic hymn “America" also know as "My country, 'Tis of thee."

Our passage through the Strait of Dover was typical for rush hour on a marine highway. The only place I’ve ever sailed that was more crowded with ships than it is here is the Strait of Korea where orderly use of traffic separation schemes, or sea lanes, is not maintained and no fisherman speaks the English tongue. At least in the English Channel in between Dover and Cap Griz Nez the traffic is constantly being monitored by a Vessel Traffic Service. Utilizing land based radar stations to monitor the flow of vessels 24 hours a day the VTS acts just like Air Traffic Control does at any airport.
(Disclaimer: I'm not the one using relative trails in this ph0tograph, a practice I do not endorse)

The main difference with a VTS is that they do not assign flight patterns to ships instead relying on each vessel’s bridge team to navigate through their surveillance areas safely. If a dangerous situation emerges, perhaps when a panicky third mate does something brash without calling his captain as a Dover/Calais ferry making 24 knots cut’s across his bow, the VTS will intervene informing both vessels of their impending doom.

The Dover Strait Coast Guard, who maintains the English side of the Traffic Separation Scheme, also has a reputation for mailing fuming letters to shipping companies who’s vessels were not paying attention to the collision regulations. They nailed one former mate’s ass to the wall at my company for standing on with a crossing ferry when he should have been giving way and not replying to the distressed radio calls from the approaching vessel.

We arrived in Germany after a ten day crossing, which all hands agreed had seemed laboriously long, just after dinner and had a straight shot through the lock. We swapped out places with an outbound car carrier and moored snugly against the quay with the wind fortuitously on the offshore side. Given the immensity and shape of the ship, a wind blowing us off the dock is cause for keeping the bow thruster warm all night and little sleep for the Captain.

Once the ramp was down a mass exodus occurred in which all the day workers trounced off in a pack intent on beginning their own financial bailout plan for the bars of Bremerhaven. You wouldn’t think there was a slowdown in the E.U.’s biggest economy though after surveying the docks. Rows and rows of trucks, busses, cars, heavy machinery and all kinds of other brand new machines span from one horizon to the other. Not to mention the worlds longest (Not the largest) container quay is still piled with boxes which are hurriedly shifted from ship to stacks to ship by spindly legged carriers 24 hours a day.

Tomorrow will be Christmas Eve and the Captain has arranged for the American Seaman’s Club to open for dinner. Out of the goodness of their hearts the owners are going to make Christmas Dinner for all attending hands and the Captain is going to pick up the tab on all the drinks. I’ll be absent from the festivities instead sleeping before my mid watch and more importantly, attending to my Santa Claus duties in the early morning hours. The Captain has tasked me with putting out the dozens of welfare gifts donated by seaman’s mission all over the East Coast containing toiletries, pens, envelopes, stamps and hand knitted caps and stockings thanks to grandmothers all over the greater Baltimore metropolitan area.