Thursday, April 20, 2006

Natives go gaga over another big ship again

Nobody knows why for sure, but when it comes to giving monstrous passenger ships a warm and truly heartfelt welcome, nobody does it better than the Germans. Well, nobody does it better than the Hamburgers do, I should say.

The world’s latest largest cruise ship, the “Freedom of the Seas”, docked for some final touchup work at the famous Blohm + Voss docks in Hamburg the other day and thousands were already on hand there, patiently waiting to cheer her arrival - at six o’clock in the morning.

Hello? At six o’clock in the morning? I mean, the crew isn’t even up by then, is it?

Anyway, they do this all the time up there it seems. Last year the Queen Mary II came in at some God awful hour, too and sure enough, there they were, cheering and screaming like crazy as if it were Beatlemania all over again or something. I saw an interview they did later that day with the QM2’s captain and he said that Hamburg was the only place where people went ape like that. He obviously couldn’t explain it himself and even seemed a bit pensive and troubled and soon got visibly nervous, you could see it. And I think he had a gun with him and he just wanted to get the hell out of there that moment and was about to flip big time but that was probably just a purely subjective impression I was having right then so never mind.

Be that as it may, all I really wanted to say (I think) was that the natives really love to holler at big ships like these so if you ever feel the need to be welcomed as if you were the Queen of England or the Pope or something just book a cruise on one those babies and make sure that it stops in Hamburg. And go to bed real early the night before.

Auf der Reeperbahn, morgens um...

Kommentare auf Deutsch immer gerne entgegengenommen.

Posted by clarsonimus at 07:04:16 | Permanent Link | Comments (5) |
Comments
1 - I took that as supremely surreal. When the QM2 came to Hamburg that first time I worked in an office in the Speicherstadt, right by th harbor. Going to work, the u-bahn was strangely filled, the whole areas around the u-bahn station (Baumwall) had all these people milling about. Later they were walking into the office buildings, up the stairs and back out the other exit. Just walking around, trying to get to the ship. I could see it from my window. But ships go by there everyday. So what? Don't ask me to explain it. GOing home it was SRO all the way to the Hauptbahnhof.

Later when I was back in NRW for the weekend, everyone asked me about the QM2. They'd all heard she'd be docking in HH via TV. Maybe all those people werent even from Hamburg. Did they come from all over Germany?!? (Comment this)

Written by: indeterminacy at 2006/04/20 - 17:05:01
2 - P.S. Did those people have a permit to go down there all at the same time? (Comment this)

Written by: Indeterminacy at 2006/04/21 - 12:15:38
3 - They were simply passively watching a ship, not demonstrating actively for something. So they wont have needed any :) (Comment this)

Written by: Zyme at 2006/04/21 - 14:18:46
4 - Now that IS cool. Flash mobs are legal. (Comment this)

Written by: indeterminacy at 2006/04/21 - 18:06:12
5 - Stop it will you? A mob is something different.. (Comment this)

Written by: Zyme at 2006/04/21 - 19:42:08
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