Exploring Landskrona

Today we went out into the town to see what we could see-see-see. Much to our surprise the town of Landskrona with it's ugly shipyard is actually the most beautiful township I've ever laid my eyes upon. It totally blows Kiel out of the water. Earlier I described Sweeden as Northrend because of it's geographical location but it seems much more like Goldshire to me. So many beautiful parks with lakes and trees and lamp-posts.
So when my German friend saw this sign he commented "Hey, do you know what that sign says?" and of course I replied "Nope" because it's in sweedish - duh. He then said "Neither do I! Isn't it great?". It fees good to be in a country where Matt can no longer understand the language either. Apparently Sweedish people speak good english - that's good because Sweedish is freaky.
So Matt and I found these pens with various animals in them including these Llamas, which didn't seem too interested in us, despite the German's amazement at such a creature. We also found some young Llamas which we petted and some young bulls. Matt climed into the pen and stared down the bull for a while.
Man this lake was so beautiful that I just had to cry.

Arriving in Landskrona

Finally we arrived in landskrona a little after 15:00. The shipyard where we are staying is heavily industrialised and looks dangerous and ugly, but it sure is fascinating. There is a ship next to us that is being sandblasted and painted in the dry dock. Apparently we have to wait for 10 days to get into the drydock because another ship got in ahead of us because they paid more money. It's going to be rough and tough here in Landskrona, but since there are fewer people on board it'll be a time of community building as well as hard work.

Leaving Kiel

Today the logos hope finally sailed out of Kiel after a long stay in the northen German town. As the ship still is not registered as a passenger ship it can only take 80 crew while sailing, so any non-essential personnel had to go by land in a bus - that means me and thankfully all my friends as well. Here you see me and Philipp waiting on the keyside for the ship to sail away
Many from local churches and the community at large came to say good-bye to the ship and it's crew, many visiting the day before and during the morning before forming a large crowd on the quayside to send off the ship that has been a large part of the christian community in Kiel for many months.
Finally sailing away it still required two tugs to navigate safely out of the harbor. Everyone cheered and there were many horns-a-honking including car horns, air horns and finally the big, manly ship horn.
So with the ship gone the remnants of the ship's crew walked down the road to a local church where we spent the night on the floor before heading off to Sweeden on a coach. We were all very excited and a little disapointed to be not sailing with the ship, but it was fun nonetheless.

A new look

So dry dock is on the way - a time of dirtyness and hard work where the showers and toilets may be a long way from my room - off the ship for example. So I've decided that I don't really like hair normally and I'm really going to hate having dirty unwashed hair so I got rid of all of it.
So far all the Australians have approved of my haircut, and everyone else has asked "What happened???". I personally think it's pretty cool, but that's just me. Also now all the Aussie guys have shaved their heads, most of them adding some sort of feature - like mohawks.

Hope Fest

This weekend we opened the doors of the Logos Hope - more accurately we set up the gangways to deck 4, the visitor experience deck. There were cultural exibits from many different countries and regions including Australia.
On saturday night we put on a stunning program for the people of kiel with dances, songs, flags and costumes from every nation on board.
Here is a performance from some of the many South Koreans on board.
We also did a number of dramas including for the first time ever on Logos Hope "Everything" (search for lifehouse everything skit on youtube and you'll see what I mean).

Open Ship - Ich kommen aus Australian

Every Friday night is open ship night and last week was Australian themed, so there were Aussie flags and Vegemite and thongs and green and gold. I wore my board shorts and t-shirt, sunnies, thongs and zinc cream and directed people up the stairs. I also took part in a game where three people had to make human sculptures of Australian landmarks - the Germans scored more applause somehow... At the end Meg and I were talking to a German man who had kind of shaky hands, as the conversation went on it became apparent that he had some sort of mental ailment. He was a Christian but he was going through some struggles and our listening ear and some of Meg's words were a great comfort to him and we got to pray with him (though he was certain to mention he didn't want us to touch him) and he felt a lot better when he had been prayed for and talked to and left the ship. So there's some small way in which I was able to help reach out to people on the ship.
Sorry there were no pictures :-(