Bremerhaven

(Thursday, May 19th, 2016)

I needed some time with an internet connection to get Dropbox sync’d and some blog posting accomplished, so I rented a hotel room in Bremerhaven for a night. I spent an afternoon and a morning walking around before returning to the ship.

My hotel was the City Hotel Shulz near Christ Church near the middle of Bremerhaven. The hotel was exactly what I needed. The room was small but pleasant and sufficient, the WiFi was good, and the restaurant downstairs was perfect for what I needed. The young woman at the front desk had just spent a few months in San Francisco, in an English-immersion class. Small world! We talked about Market Street and the Ferry Building, and the hill up to Sutro Tower. In English!

The steeple of Christ Church was just tall enough to be seen through other buildings, and distinguished enough from nearby churches, so when I wanted to walk back to the hotel I had a reference.

Bremerhaven is a nice mid-sized town, centered around the port and shipyards. The port is large when compared to Port Manatee, but small when compared to Hamburg or Shanghai. But then most ports are small when compared to those two.

Several canals and harbor accesses wind through the town, so it was fun to look at commercial vessels and private boats and yachts docked here and there. Small parks with deep green grass were all around. Not that many people were out and about. It was windy, chilly, and spitting rain just a little bit, just enough so that one might choose to go for a walk on some other day. I did not have that choice.

I walked past the company that builds the orange emergency lifeboats that I see on almost every big ship. And a sailmaking company, and a marine radio company. In a mall there was a shop dedicated to things, like a hoodie or a bag, made from old sailcloth.

In town there were winding streets with close-connected townhouses, some of which were obviously much older than others. Being a port and a shipyard, I am sure that Bremerhaven got its share of damage during World War II. Cobblestone streets were common. Car tires make a different sound on cobblestone!

Speaking of cars, I was jealous of all the cool small (tiny, by US standards) cars from all sorts of manufacturers. We are really missing out on some practical, stylish, environmentally friendly fun. Not much bigger than Smart cars (of which there were a few to be seen), but much more sporty, and with vestigal rear seats. I saw no Hummers or Escalades. But also no hybrid Priuses (Prii?) either.

The bar/church ratio was pretty good. I won’t tell which side of zero I prefer, but some towns are very skewed. This one seemed fair to both sides. Both Octoberfest and Martin Luther are German.

Bremerhaven has several museums, a zoo, and a whole “experience” building. There were also many historical ships that one could tour. It was windy and wet outside, so although I wanted to tour some ships it didn’t sound like fun. Except for one – a submarine! So I toured the “Wilhelm Bauer”, a WWII-era U-boat. (Mr. Bauer was the inventor of the submarine in the 1800’s, according to a sign on the ship.) It never saw service, was scuttled near the end of the war, then recovered twelve years later and restored over a period of years. I am not necessarily a fan of war machines, but it was interesting to see what technology was like in the middle of the last century. When I was visiting inside, I was the only person there besides two gentlemen at the entrance desk. I felt crowded. Ha. I know I have a mild case of claustrophobia. The sub had a crew of 58. That number kept sticking in my mind. Wow.

You know those movies in which a sub captain finishes looking through the periscope, slams up the handholds as the scope starts to fall, and steps back before yelling something? Well, there is no “stepping back”. There is simply no room. The idea that there might be four or five people standing around the captain during those scenes, if repeated in a real U-boat, would mean that “face-to-face” meant that faces would almost be touching each other. But the yelling? The proximity of the periscope to the engines, and the snorkels delivering air to the engine intakes when the sub is near the surface, probably required it.

At the end of my walk I walked back to the ship, or at least back to the security gate. While waiting for a shuttle to take me back to the ship, I stared at the side of a massive car carrier, acres of flat steel. Cars and small delivery vans driving off a rear gangway. Somewhat different in scope than the “Wilhelm Bauer”.