2022 June - Welcome Höft - The Hamburg ship greeting facility

Today a tip for visitors to Hamburg who need a relaxing day by the water.

The journey takes you to Wedel. This place is located just outside Hamburg, in Schleswig-Holstein, but the S1 train line will take you directly there. If you prefer, you can take bus 189 for 3 stops to the Elbstraße stop.

And there you will find the Hamburg ship greeting facility, Willkomm Höft. Ships with a gross register tonnage of 1,000 or more that are arriving at or departing from the Port of Hamburg are welcomed here by so-called greeting captains.

First, the Hamburg flag is dipped. This means it is briefly lowered and raised again. Then the greeting, 'Welcome to Hamburg,' is made via cassette (!) or digitally. Some of the recordings actually sound very old, as if they are from the early days of the ship greeting facility. In fact, it has been around since 1952, so for 70 years! Hans Albers himself was present at the opening.

It becomes even more special when the national anthem of the ship's home country is played and one of the ships responds to the greeting with a sound from its signal horn.

But that's not all. The greeting captain also has plenty of details for the audience. You will not only learn the name of the ship, but also its speed, crew size, shipping company, draft, length, and width. The speaker receives this information from the ship reporting service. The service also provides the approximate arrival time of the ship in Wesel.

So you can spend the whole day watching ships while sitting comfortably on a bench or eating and drinking in the beer garden of the Schulauer Fährhaus.

We opted for the latter. And even though we didn't have much to do, our visit was still a bit exciting. One of the large ships passed by us every 20 minutes or so, creating a special atmosphere.

The crowds are naturally larger when an exclusive ship is expected. This was the case today. The Sea Cloud Spirit was expected at Willkomm Höft around 7 p.m. But by that time, we were no longer there. We saw the ship leave the Port of Hamburg from the Landungsbrücken at 6 p.m. So it actually takes about 1 hour for the ship to arrive at Willkomm Höft.

By the way, according to the description on the menu of the Schulauer Fährhaus, the ship greeting service is said to be unique worldwide. So it's definitely worth experiencing!

We really enjoyed it and we plan to come back again. Today, the weather was very gloomy, and we definitely need more relaxation by the water.

Update: We came back the next day because of a canceled appointment. This time it was sunny.