6 Oct: Bremerhaven and the Naval Museum

Today we went by train to Bremerhaven, primarily to visit the Deutches Schifffahrtsmuseum (yes, there are three consecutive f's in that word; it's the German Ship-Goings Museum, schiff.fahrts). It was a day of mixed success.

Owing to a lengthy ride with a change in Bremen, we arrived fairly late in the morning and got our first glimpse of the museum walking down from the station.

The fanciful thing in the background is the Atlantic Sail City Hotel, which is modeled after one in Dubai. In the middle ground, the masts of the square-rigger Seute Deerne.

The indoor part of the museum is housed in a large modern building. In here are hundreds of objects including many, many beautifully detailed models and quite a number of complete boats of different eras. Of particular interest was a Hanseatic Cog, a type of cargo ship that carried the wealth of the Hanseatic cities. Lifted in scattered bits from the mud of the river a few years ago it has been undergoing reconstruction inside the museum. Unfortunately we can't show you or ourselves any of these things because photography was not allowed inside.

David was quite grumpy about this whole indoor experience. Besides not being able to take pictures, only one of the 35+ exhibition areas had any English labels or captions, so much of the interesting stuff remained a mystery. And he thought the staff was unhelpful and rude. Marian disagrees, thought the staff was fine and the exhibits rewarding.

Outside was better in any case. Several of the historic ships were open and you could clamber onto and through them without hindrance. Up and down the steep metal ladders, into engine rooms and bunk rooms, etc. Great fun. Here are a few pictures of that.

Marian at the wheel of the square-rigger.

The Seefalke, a deep-sea salvage tug from before WWII.

Salvage tugs go out in the worst weather and most dangerous locations to salvage sinking ships

Engine room showing engine telegraph from bridge.

Pride of the museum fleet is the U-boat Wilhelm Bauer, the only surviving member of its class, which was the first type of U-boat to be able to cruise long distances underwater. It was scuttled after being damaged in 1944. Later it was raised and recommissioned as an engineering test boat.

For €3 you can crawl through its round hatches and see the entire inside.

After you buy your ticket, this is what you see.

Forward control room where rudder and diving planes are managed.

Aft, where the engines are controlled.

Sadly it wasn't possible to get a decent picture of the periscope and command area, but it looked a lot like in the movies. As to life on board we give you:

One of the two (2) toilets for the crew of 58, sharing space with valves and levers.

OK after that the day went downhill. Earl gave us a rare bum steer, a road that should have led to great fish restaurants but instead led us more than a mile to empty piers. Then we took a city bus and David for no apparent reason, chose the wrong direction of bus and we ended up after a 40 minute ride in the completely wrong end of the town. So we took another bus back to the train station where, since we'd missed one train, we had time for a pizza supper in a chilly open-air fast-food counter before the next train, getting back to Hamburg Hauptbahnhof at 8:30. This was, Marian pointed out, only the second real navigational screw-up of the trip (remember losing the footpath in Kloster Andechs?). Not so bad, we weren't on a schedule anyway. And so to bed.