Germany - football game and chocolate bunnies

We made really good time on our sail to Germany.  Because of this, we had to anchor for a night before we went into the Keil Canal. The next day when we were scheduled to enter, there was too much wind for us to manoeuvre through the locks safely so we had to wait another day. The next morning the pilot came on board so that we could go through the locks and into the canal – however, there was too much fog so we were advised to wait until it lifted.

While we were waiting we got news of a collision in the canal. It was the worst accident that the canal has had in years and it was caused by the fog. Two people were killed. So it was a good thing that we didn’t try to enter in the fog! We had to wait for things to be cleaned up in the canal so it wasn’t until late in the afternoon that we got to go into the canal. We went from being a day early to a day late! It was so cool once we finally got in. It was kind of like sailing in the South Saskatchewan River; there was land fairly close on either side. So many big container ships went through the canal so there were times that they would pass by meters away from us. There were little towns on the shore and some bridges that we had to pass under. It was a really neat change to the ocean sailing that I’m used to.

We sailed into Lubeck the next evening. It’s a really beautiful city. The first thing that we all did was go for schnitzel!

The first full day in Germany we opened the ship for public tours in the morning. I stayed back to give tours; it was a lot of fun to show people our home. It was also quite interesting the people that showed up. I mostly had families however one boy gave a tour to an old man who had sailed on the Sorlandet fifteen years ago; and someone else had an old ship engineer who basically gave the student the tour! The people in Germany were really friendly and very interested in the ship and our program.

After the tours were over I went with my watch to Hamburg. It was about a 45 minute train ride there. When we got to Hamburg, most of the watch wanted to go to the football (soccer) game that was taking place later that day. It was Hamburg against Hanover - two rival teams - so it was expected to be a really good game. The 56 000 person stadium was sold out so we had to scalp our tickets on the street. Everyone that wanted a ticket ended up getting one so there was a lot of us that went to the game. It was a so much fun! The atmosphere was incredible. People were so into the game. The fans were crazy! There were two guys that got into a fight right in from of me! The game was really close. In the end the teams ended up tying 0-0. I was kind of hoping that someone would score but it was still lots of fun.

football stadium in Hamburg



Sarah NeuBURGER eating a snitzel BURGER in HamBURG

After the game we met up with the rest of my watch and went to the hostel that we would be staying at. Once we got checked in we went out for the night to a fair in town. It was a lot of fun. There were lots of rides and really good food. German fair food is so much better than Canadian! When we were at the fair we met a big group of exchange students that were staying at the same hostel as us. (I forget to mention this but the previous night we had also seen some of them in Lubeck and they came to see our ship) They were from Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the US. It was fun to hang out with people our age that weren’t on the ship. After the fair we went back to the hostel. In the morning we got to sleep in! I kind of forgot how and woke up at 8:30 but that was still about one and a half more hours sleep than normal. We had breakfast at the hostel and then caught a train back to Lubeck to meet with the rest of our crew. We all went on a port program to visit an old tea clipper called the Passat. She was twice the size of the Sorlandet! The Passat turns 100 this year. We got a tour and there was a museum down below that we got to see. Is it a surprise that I appreciate seeing ships so much more and find them a lot more interesting?!


the Passat - German tea clipper

The next day was full day shore leave. There was a man with Tourism Lubeck who offered to give free tours of the cathedral to us so I decided to do that in the morning. I’ve seen so many cathedrals in Europe that I thought that it would be the exact same but it wasn’t. The tour started out quite normal. We learnt that it was the oldest gothic brick cathedral in Europe and that it had been partially burnt down during WWII and then reconstructed. After that though the man took us up a spiral staircase that was closed off to the public. It took us all the way up to inside the roof. It wasn’t like being inside a normal church tower. We were actually inside the roof, like where the rafters are! It was so cool because you could see how they lay the bricks for the vaulting. We got to explore in there for awhile.

After the really cool cathedral tour I went to the grocery store. Holly and I had planned the Easter egg hunt, which we would do in Poland - so our shipboard director Bruce gave us money to go buy chocolate. We found lots of little eggs and gummy bunnies and such, and we were going to get one big chocolate bunny for every watch. We then noticed how cheap some of the chocolate bunnies were - we could get everyone a big bunny! Our cart was loaded up with 70 Easter chocolate bunnies! You should have seen the look on the face of the lady at the checkout! The best part though was that we managed to carry them all back to the ship without using a single plastic shopping bag. I had some reusable bags and other people in our group loaded up their backpacks.



70 Easter chocolate bunnies!



When we got back to the ship Bruce was out so we decided that it would be funny if we hid all seventy bunnies in his small cabin! It was probably the funniest thing that I’ve ever seen :D  After the bunnies, I just spent the afternoon in Lubeck. I bought a ton of chocolate to take home. Germans have really good chocolate! Lubeck is also known for its marzipan so I bought tons of that as well. I now have no room in my locker because of all the chocolate!