Thread by @skrodolies

Every Christmas Eve, for the last 40 years or so, the Kreuzkirche church trombone choir plays a couple of quick Christmas concerts aboard the ships lying in Bremerhaven's port.

The logistics are handled by the Bremerhaven Seamen's Mission, for which I volunteer, and this is my third Christmas concert tour. I am really looking forward to it.

It is actually not easy to find ships that can fit in this concert: The port closes at noon, so all loading operations will stop until the 27th (with some expensive exceptions). So while there are currently enough ships at port...

...everyone rushes to get out of Dodge to avoid the downtime and the port fees. Seven ships are scheduled to leave today, with the next ship arriving only on the evening of the 26th. If it weren't for Christmas, about 35 ships would have arrived until then.

Arrived at the seamen's center, the staging area for today. Band has also arrived.

And, we're off

First concert: Hanni

Next up: Hermes Leader

The band has arrived

Next ship: Don Pasquale.
My job today is to check with ships if they have time for a concert, so I am driving ahead of the group.

While talking to the crew of Don Pasquale to set up the gig I was asked how long the shops are open today. People were not happy about my reply.

Next up is St Louis Express, I really hope this is going to work out here. Let's check.

They accepted. Met Kate from Massachusetts and took Sam and Dalton to the supermarket before it closes.

The ship belongs to Hapag Lloyd and they recently announced they will move their US lines from Bremerhaven to Hamburg. So this will probably be the last visit of the St Louis Express here.

That's not only lost business for the port of Bremerhaven: the Lloyd part of Hapag Lloyd was *the* foundational shipping company for the entire city and port of Bremerhaven. So having them leave really sucks.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norddeuts…

Last ship for today: Blue Giant.
Built in Bremerhaven in 2008 and docked here for the entire last year, but now heading out to Mexico. Finally an opportunity for me to listen in.
ship-technology.com/projects/blue_…

White Christmas

And a group photo

Mexican encore

Back at the seamen's center. The last concert went really well, better than others today, I am told. Sometimes there were just too few people, or too tired, or too busy.

But if it works it can be really nice. Seafarers are a pretty sober bunch (emotionally, that is), so some touchy feely preaching is not going to do much.

But Christmas songs, where the melodies are the same pretty much everywhere around the world, can be a really moving experience.

Even for the driver.

And then, everything ends with frankfurters.

Merry Christmas, all the best for 2019

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