ALL ABOARD!
When German cruise ship Mein Schiff 6 stops in Norfolk, a lot happens below deck
NORFOLK — A crisp wind blew in off the Elizabeth River Oct. 21 as the lights of the Mein Schiff 6 appeared a few hundreds yards off the pier. Steam billowed off a stack on the top deck as the nearly 100,000-thousand ton German vessel slowly slid down the river.
Line handlers waiting to tie the ship down at Nauticus soon got a break from the early morning cold — the sheer size of Mein Schiff, which translates to My Ship, was enough to block the wind.
Inside, 800 of roughly 2,700 passengers were gearing up for tours. Some were headed to the world’s largest naval base, others for bike rides around Hampton Roads or day trips up to Colonial Williamsburg. Most were from Germany or German-speaking countries like Switzerland and Austria.
But a different, unseen hustle was playing out elsewhere. In the mazes beneath the decadent, hotel-like decks of the Mein Schiff, a well-orchestrated symphony of workers helps keep the ship going.
During their 11-hour stopover in Norfolk, 1,000 crew members from more than 40 countries, like China, the Philippines and Indonesia, were teaming up to clean 1,267 cabins, chop fresh fruit for breakfast and sort through nearly 80 bags of laundry.
A dozen bars and lounges along with 11 restaurants on the ship are supported by a 200-person galley crew. An 11-person department oversees the 230 tons of provisions brought aboard in New York City where the cruise starts and ends.
There’s always work to be done, and this Sunday stop was business as usual.
“It’s a normal day for us,” said the ship’s captain, Todd Burgman, a native of landlocked Nebraska and one of few American cruise captains in the industry. “It’s a major operation. You think about a hotel with 2,700 beds that moves all over the world.”
Eight decks beneath the captain, Domgfei Chen, the ship’s head of laundry, who’s from Shanghai, had been busy at work for much of the morning. His team of 17 splits shifts between day and night to clean clothes and uniforms for both passengers and crew members. They wash all the sheets, towels and linens, too.
With just two days left on the cruise, that day was the last passengers could leave laundry to be cleaned, nearly doubling the amount the crew usually handles.
Stacks of neatly folded green, blue and brown towels sat atop a table near massive, industrial-size washers with doors like a bank vault. Machines press linens and fold sheets and, in another nearby room, employees fold T-shirts and iron pants for passengers. Their clean clothes are matched with the correct cabin room number.
Crew members like Chen typically work 10-hour shifts, seven days a week during the cruise season.
When the Mein Schiff ended this cruise in New York at 7 a.m. Tuesday, new provisions were loaded up and the crew had six hours until new passengers started boarding for the next cruise. It’s known in the industry as turnaround day.
“We put everything at zero and start over,” said Andreas Reinert, the ship’s hotel manager, who oversees what’s by far the largest
department with 850 employees.
To prepare for that busy day while in Norfolk, a housekeeping crew of about 200 began to put clean linens in bags in each cabin. When they turn the ship over, all they have to do is remove the used sheets and blankets and put the new ones on.
Cleaning staffers work in teams of two, tackling 20 to 30 cabins across the 15deck ship. Reinert gets a list of which passengers are out for excursions and for how long, so crews can hit those rooms first.
The Mein Schiff’s stop was the 14th port call for a cruise ship in Norfolk so far this year, with another 15 scheduled through Christmas.
By next year, the cruise scene will change. Carnival, the only cruise line that is homeported in Norfolk, will return to the city next spring after a year-long hiatus.
The economic impact of cruise stops like this have been documented before. Nauticus, using numbers from the trade organization Florida-Caribbean Cruise Association, estimates that passengers spend $104 while in port. For a ship like Mein Schiff, that pans out to roughly $260,000.
Cruise lines have to go through frequent healthrelated inspections and, last year, some companies did not perform well. Cruise lines failed their sanitation inspections at the highest rate ever since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Vessel Sanitation Program started inspecting vessels in 1990, according to an analysis by the Miami Herald.
The Mein Schiff 6 passed an inspection in October with a 96 out of 100, Reinert said. They passed their first inspection in September 2017 with a 99, according to the CDC, which says on its website that while people generally associate cruise ships with outbreaks of noroviruses, such illnesses are relatively infrequent.
Down a long passageway from the laundry operation, Reinert was preparing to inspect the many stores, or large rooms that hold provisions, to see how much was left before the end of the trip. Staff calls the long passageway the Autobahn, after the German highway.
The ship’s parent company, TUI Cruises, which is in a joint venture in part with Royal Caribbean Cruises, plans each year how much food and beverages to load. The trick is to be running low by just the right amount at the end of the cruise so no food is wasted.
A couple weeks ago, the ship was loaded with 60,000 fresh eggs and 12 tons of fresh fruit, including four tons of oranges and close to 1,000 pounds of apples. There were two tons of shrimp and about 18 tons of meat and fish. Each day, the cruise uses about 5,000 eggs and consumes around 264 gallons of beer. There are plenty of dry goods, too.
Most everything on the ship is German — the announcements made over loudspeakers, the chocolate truffles served at an inside cafe, the beer that flows from kegs on lower decks. When the ship left New York two weeks ago on a trip down to Florida and the Bahamas and back up the East Coast, provisions were shipped in from Europe.
If you lined up all the stores side by side, they would fill half a football field.
“You need mountains of toilet paper,” Reinert said.
During a port call, restaurants and bars tend to be far less busy than a day at sea, with most of the passengers gone exploring. In Norfolk, passengers can quickly get to the center of the city or to a main attraction like the USS Wisconsin, which is right next door.
This down time means crew members can sneak away for breaks.
One receptionist, German-born Chiara Hoeggemann, has worked on the ship for the last year and a half. She applied for the job after taking a trip on another Mein Schiff cruise with her parents a few years ago. On her down time, she usually relaxes in her cabin to watch TV (internet is not free) or eat in one of the restaurants if it’s not busy.
Her friends back home think she’s crazy for working such long hours — they typically work 7 or 8 hour days, five days a week. But she doesn’t mind.
“If you work in an office you may have the same view every day,” said Hoeggemann, 22.
Here on the Mein Schiff, she’s met people from across the world and has made stops in Miami, the Bahamas, New York and Canada.
With turnaround day coming, Hoeggemann knows she’ll likely be work- ing a 14-hour stretch. About 3,000 pieces of luggage will be put out in the Autobahn passageway the day before. The ship will be cleared the next morning.
From about noon to 1 p.m., the ship will be empty of passengers. “You can look around and say, ‘This is all mine now,’ ” Hoeggemann said with a smile.
By 1 p.m., new passengers will start filing on and she’ll be back to work.
The Mein Schiff will head back out to sea. Rago can be reached by phone at 757-446-2601.