The “Queen Mary 2” of the shipping company Cunard Line will kick off this year’s Hamburg Cruise Days. The cruise ship, probably the most popular in Hamburg, calls at the Steinwerder terminal at around 7 a.m. on Friday. The Atlantic liner will leave Hamburg again on Friday evening, bound for New York. The ship will say goodbye at around 9.15 p.m. in front of the Elbphilharmonie with the start of the Blue Port Hamburg light show by light artist Michael Batz.
On Saturday at around 10:35 p.m., the “AIDAprima” and the “MSC Magnifica” are to meet again as part of a multimedia production between the Elbphilharmonie and the Landungsbrücken. The “AIDAsol” from Aida Cruises and the MS “Otto Sverdrup” from the Norwegian shipping company Hurtigruten are also expected to arrive in Hamburg at the weekend as further cruise ships.
With five cruise ships and around 120,000 visitors expected by the organizers, the Hamburg Cruise Days are significantly smaller this year than in 2019. At the time, around 500,000 visitors saw the twelve cruise ships that came to the major event last year before the pandemic began were. This year’s Hamburg Cruise Days had been postponed from their originally planned date in September 2021 due to the consequences of the pandemic.
Despite the much smaller interpretation this year, the environmental organization Nabu criticizes the event sharply. Five cruise ships that are powered by heavy oil and the extensive renunciation of the use of shore power are no longer acceptable in view of climate change. “It is absolutely incomprehensible how this industry, which receives so much public attention and encouragement, continues to rely on the dirtiest fuel in the world,” said Malte Siegert, Chairman of Nabu Hamburg.
“Especially the ‘Queen Mary 2’, which is almost courted in Hamburg, sets a bad example. The city is missing the opportunity to at least let the Cruise Days become a showcase for promising solutions.” Siegert also criticized the implementation of the Hamburg Cruise Days against the background of the current crisis on the energy market caused by the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine. “Against the background of the current energy crisis, such events should be questioned all the more critically,” he said. “While appeals are being made to all Hamburg residents to save energy, the cruise ships are wasting energy on a massive scale and are also polluting the residents with their exhaust fumes.”
The Left Party parliamentary group in the Hamburg Parliament wants to demonstrate on site against the Hamburg Cruise Days: “The Hamburg Cruise Days are a festival for tourists and cruise travelers. However, they are torture for the port and for the people around it, and they are very bad news for the climate,” said the parliamentary group on Thursday. “We on the left think: Such a stinky party is no longer up to date!” For Friday at 3 p.m., the left-wing faction at the Landungsbrücken U-Bahn and S-Bahn station invites you to a protest against the Hamburg Cruise Days, “with respiratory protection, dry ice and other cruises -Accesories”.