Day Two

Building on Kim's post - what an amazing day. The photos here are from the top of Sail City. Looking north over Bremerhaven's new harbours and east over the city center with the wind turbines and farmland in the distance. As Bremerhaven is a port city, much of it was destroyed during the Second World War and had to be rebuilt. It has also gone through a tremendous change since then. It used to have a huge fishing industry and a large ship building industry and has had to adapt to changing circumstances.

The Lloyd Werft tour was amazing. Once a thriving ship building area it has been re-created to specialize in ship overhauls, specializing in ships lengthening - where the aft and bow are seperated and a new length of ship inserted. It is also a huge shipping port and over 1 million vehicles travel through the port every year. We saw everything from cars to boats to farm tractors to tanks and firetrucks all waiting - either having been just unloaded or being prepared for shipment.

The container port is one of the largest in the world and we had the chance to see a container ship being loaded. A tractor trailer unit carrying two containers enters the wharf, unloads, re-loads and exits the facility in twelve minutes. Talk about planning and precision!

I am back at the Wharf for my vocational day and I hope to take the opportunity to learn about the logistics, operation and efficiencies of such an amazing facility.