To tell you a little more about this ship trip (photos at the bottom):

First of all the reason why I took the cargo ship is, maybe for obvious reasons, to try to contribute a little less to the destruction of the planet. From what I heard, our planet is in a quite serious climate crisis, so when I thought of the things that cause most damage in my life, one of the tops is probably flying. But because I am going to work in the US for a bit, I tried to find a way that is a bit better and I came up with the following options:

1) Stay where you are right now. This is not an option to get to the US but it sure would have been the eco-friendliest option and also something I could have chosen to do and it's also my parents' favourite option (although they didn't really raise their children to "stay where you are" so I partly blame them ;-)). But, I had decided to go, so, no option anymore.

2) Sail. I was told that this is not possible during this time of the year due to weather conditions. I wonder why Greta could do it then... (I was gonna say "probably because she has Asperger’s", but I feel like as a supporter of hers I should not say this out loud) Also because it's even more complicated to book and less reliable concerning timing, this was also not an option.

3) Swim. My dad's joke.

4) Cargo ship. My last and only remaining option. I still don't know what is generally worse for the environment - a ship or a plane. But booking a plane ticket contributes to the demand for planes to fly, and so I disagree with people who say the planes fly anyway. Here's an article about this topic www.daslamm.ch/fliegen-ist-ja-schon-nicht-so-gut-aber (especially no. 5), it's in German, but maybe Google translate works well enough... I don't think flying should/can be banned completely, but every not booked ticket is a contribution. But the cargo ship goes also without passengers, so as long as they go anyways it's more like hitchhiking and that makes enough sense to me.

So I booked it at a Swiss travel agency called Globoship, and it's quite expensive... One-way from Belgium/Germany to New York cost in this case CHF 2020.- plus the travel to and from the ports (which is more than what it would have been to/from the airport in Zurich/Miami but at least I could go to some more places on the way.) The cheapest offer that was given to me was around EUR 1200.- (offered by a German travel agency) but apparently I was too late to book that. I don't know why it's so expensive besides the fact that room and full-board for 2 weeks is not for free, plus you get the transportation, so I guess that's why. So we'll see if I'll have enough money to buy a return ticket or not... One can also book it directly at the shipping company, which in my case would have been Grimaldi based in Italy, there's also CMA CGM (their price was EUR 2000.-), but I assume the advantage of a travel agency is that they can offer a bigger overview of all the options.

I was told that the arrival and departure date may change, but I was lucky and my ship (which was called Atlantic Sky) left and arrived exactly on the dates that I was told.

In Antwerp I could take the bus to get to the immigration (I had to go there before I could board the ship), but from there I had to take the taxi. When I arrived at the port building, they checked my ID etc. and I was driven to the ship. It looked huge! (It's almost 300 meters long, so a bit larger that the Titanic. They said it's a small cargo ship, though). Then I was told to just walk up the ramp on to the ship, just a few seconds later they thought that's probably too dangerous (why...?) and so I got into another car that drove me up the ramp. There I was welcomed by a crew member and brought to my cabin. The ship is one big maze, I would not even have been able to find the way out by myself... On the way they showed me were the mess room is, that's also where we ate. They told me that lunch will be at 12:30 and left me in my cabin, so I had lots of time to watch the containers being loaded on the ship. At lunch I met my fellow passenger Viki, who is a bit younger than me and from Austria. She was a great ship travel buddy.

I have some photos of the food below. For breakfast there was always toast (usually with jam) with butter, cheese, meat slices, coffee, tea, milk, juice, eggs, etc. My favourite breakfast was pancakes (which more looked like an omelet) which we got 2 or 3 times. Lunch was usually starting with a soup or salad, then a main dish with meat, and most of the times a dessert (fruits, cake, and on Sundays: ice cream). For dinner also a salad and a main dish with meat. I am usually a vegetarian, but I wasn't sure how much of "complaining" about the food was still ok, so after we already asked for smaller portions, I thought I'm just gonna go with whatever they serve me. Although even the travel agency had told me it would not be a problem to ask them. Maybe next time. Generally the portions were huge, even after we got smaller ones. So I was never ever hungry and didn't even eat the snacks I had brought on the ship. ;-) The food was not bad (I guess it looks quite good on the photos, but I generally took more photos of the food I liked), still for some reason I could not really enjoy all of it, it was not my taste (from some of it I felt like I would have to throw up, and it wasn't because of seasickness), I believe it's the Asian or seafood parts of it. But it's food, so it's ok, and lots of it actually was good ;-)) The crew gets more or less the same food as the passengers, but the passengers (and captain, officers, …) are being served at the table.

It was nice to have my own cabin (although that also made it more expensive, but I had nobody to come with me, so ;-)). The view was to the back of the ship and it was really nice to have a window in the cabin, where I could observe the loading in the ports and sometimes the sunrise and just generally the sea. The only thing I didn’t like about the room is the really hard bed, you could actually feel the wire in it, so it's not like a hotel/hostel bed. I found a cushion from a chair, so that made it better, but I remember when I spent the first night at the hostel in New York after the ship it felt so much better. I don't know if it's like that on all ships.

I spent a lot of time in my cabin reading or watching movies/tv shows. Then for meals I would go to the mess room and see some of the crew and my fellow passenger and sometimes we watched movies together, went to the bridge, did a puzzle, or played foosball. There was also a gym and sauna on the ship, although I never used them. I probably should have, just to have some exercise. ;-) I saw two dolphins from the bridge during the trip, but each one only for about a second. At the port in New York they saw a whale but it was gone so fast, I couldn’t really see it. Viki and I, we both didn't get seasick. The waves were quite small in general. Alvin, the mess man, told us that they had huge waves on the last crossing, even the chairs were "running" (his choice of words ;-)). After a while the captain gave us a login for the Wifi, but because I wanted to stay without internet for a while I only turned it on after we arrived in Halifax. It was not that useful anyways because it was very slow.

The crew was about 23 people, and most of them (I think 17) from the Philippines, some from European countries like Bulgaria or England. Many of them spend 9 months on the ship and then have a break of 2 or 3 months. They work every day for at least 8 hours. According to them the salary is good, whatever that means. The Wifi they can use (2 hours a day) is very slow and not usable for Facebook or Skype, so only messages. In the ports they have better Wifi and can use Skype etc. I enjoyed talking to some of the crew although we were never sure how much contact they would want with the passengers, because I was advised to not disturb them at work or when they want to rest, etc. But it's the same problem for them, one of them told me, they don't know how much the passengers want to talk, so they don't start conversations so much. But some of them do, so that's good, and from what it felt like they are happy to get in contact with the passengers. Another thing we observed: They always say "good appetite" (not “enjoy your meal”) to the remaining people when they leave the mess room, how nice. ;D In the evenings they sometimes watched TV together in the mess room, concerts or action movies. Alvin had put up some blinking Christmas lights all over his room and played some Christmas music.

In Liverpool we could leave the ship while it was in the port and we spent the day exploring the city (I have photos of that day in the Liverpool folder on this website).

At the beginning I thought I will probably not enjoy the trip so much, but about half-way through, we asked the captain if we could see the engine room and we ended up getting a 2-hour tour around the whole ship. We saw the engine room, went to the very front of the ship where the anchor was, to the very end were the lifeboat was, to the top where we were almost blown away by the wind and to the decks with the loaded cargo that was not in containers, like cars etc. The crew told us that they do not know what’s in the containers, but they have a list of dangerous goods onboard. They were also carrying about a dozen or more Canadian military trucks (Viki was not amused ;D) that we were allowed to climb on and take a seat. The tour ended at the bridge where we watched the beautiful sunset.

The tour made me more excited about the trip and the bridge was my new favourite spot on the ship, because it was interesting to see the crew at work and the view was so wide and far. The captain suggested we should come to the bridge when we enter the port of Halifax, so before breakfast when it was still dark I went there and the Canadian pilot, who leads the ship through the port, was already there giving commands to the crew. This was where Viki left the ship and I went back to the bridge when we were leaving the port.

It was exciting to see the skyline of New York during the arrival. We docked at the port in Newark. After leaving the ship I actually missed being there (which is a good sign) and kept tracking it on the internet, so I guess I can recommend taking a cargo ship, at least in some cases. ;-) BTW, I have found this blog of a Swiss photographer who did the same trip earlier this year and he wrote about it here (there are many photos as well): www.eliasvetter.ch/atlantic-sky