Oceania's cruise ship Marina. Built in 2011, 66,084 gross tons, length 785, Cruising speed 20 knots, capacity 1,250 guests, crew of 800, registered in Marshall Islands. Smaller than most cruise ships which makes it nice.
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XYL and Harmonic relaxing on the stateroom veranda while underway on the Baltic Sea.
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XYL and Harmonic enjoying afternoon High Tea onboard the Marina.
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The Admiral Hotel in Copenhagen, Denmark where we stayed before boarding the Marina. Hotel was a converted grain storage warehouse, small but quite nice.
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What's left of the Berlin Wall. The wall ran the entire width of Germany and artists have painted their works on the remainder of the wall.
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Memorial to the Berlin Airlift
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The Checkpoint Charlie guard house now located in the Allied Museum in Berlin.
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Waterfront and market at Goansk, Poland
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Grand Palace of Peter the Great at Peterof, Russia not far from St. Petersburg. Nazis used the palace as a headquarters during WWII and then blew it up when forced to retreat. Has since been rebuilt.
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About the Marina's Capitan and Crew
The crew was from everywhere except the US. I knew of only one American in the 800 crewmembers and that was Willie Aames, the cruise director. He was a child actor in Hollywood, and starred in the TV series "Eight is Enough". He must have fallen on hard times to end up as a cruise director. He was in charge of all the entertainment.
Many crew members were from eastern Europe, but a lot were from Asia as well. They have six months on and six months off. They work 16 hour days, seven days a week. When the ship arrives at it's final destination, all passengers have to be gone by 0930. New passengers arrive at 1300 and the ship sets sail for the new cruise at 1700.
Their training is unbelievable and we miss the superb service back on land. The daughter and XYL miss being referred to as "madame" and having cloth napkins placed in their laps.
They don't let any passengers in the lower decks, although there were some crew quarters in the center of the ship on the 8th deck where we were. I don't understand how all of the female crew looks like they just stepped out of a fashion show considering the conditions they must be living under. I talked to one young lady from Siberia. She learned of her job on the internet, interview twice via Skype, and had a personal interview in Europe before getting her job. She is a waitress.
The Captain was Greek, and his claim to fame was his uncanny ability to navigate through hurricanes during trans Atlantic cruises. His name is Dimitrios Flokos and supervised the building of the Marina. You can check him out on Google. He has been at sea for a long time and has an interesting background. Glad he wasn't Italian, hi hi.
One interesting point about the ship is it's maneuverability. It has thrusters so that the ship can be moved sideways to be docked or can turn 360 degrees in a very small space. In one port, there was no room to dock so we were stationed out in the harbor and passengers were tendered in to the port. The anchor was never dropped. The ship remained in place all day with the thrusters guided by GPS. You could see and feel them going on and off to maintain the ship's position.
This is probably more than you ever wanted to know about the Marina.
73, Dick W4HMK
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