Designed for 9500 passengers and 2500 crew members Cruise ship Global dream is 75 percent complete and is waiting for better times in Wismar. And to still get seawater under the keel, despite the insolvency of the MV shipyards, which became known last week. The tears of shaken by the Corona crisis Owners, that is the Genting Group based in Kuala Lumpur, whose share prices are currently falling in the direction of the Mariana Trench, can be imagined as voluminous as oceans; but a ship, 342 meters long, 57 meters high, the size of a not so small small town: the tears of bankruptcy might not bear that after all. The regular insolvency proceedings are to be opened on March 1st.
Schadenfreude is not appropriate: In a structurally weak region of Germany, it is also about the future of the employees who have been starving in shipbuilding for a long time and around hundreds of families. The December salaries are still pending. It is said that “constructive” talks are currently being held between the provisional insolvency administrator and the owner Genting, who is in financial difficulties. More than half a billion euros are missing to complete the titanic ship.
in the Handelsblatt the insolvency administrator is quoted as saying: “I want to finish building the ship.” With a view to the bizarreness of the Lüftlmalerei on the bow, which strangely enough has been completed for weeks, one could, yes, one has to ask oneself: should the remaining 25 percent really be finished? Should such a monstrosity be launched as a unique architectural crime of the oceans?
Who needs morbidly bloated pots that hardly have anything to do with travel, nothing at all with ships and only very rarely with environmental compatibility? Cruise ships are the dinosaurs of our era: big, heavy, stupid, in this case: absurdly ugly – and superfluous. From a purely creative point of view, what is happening in Wismar is a form of merciful evolution. The people who build such ships, but who didn’t think up the madness of the cruise system, which is obviously running amok, also become victims of the dying dinosaurs.
In the delirium of design
In the building dock of the shipyard, the Titanic 2.0 – already a wreck of itself – can be viewed in all its absurdity. On the bow, butterflies, celestial bodies and rockets dance in meaningless bricolage in the delirium of ship design. An astronaut (if not a taikonaut, as the ship is primarily intended for Chinese tourists, which may be racist in the aesthetic outcome) emerges from the choppy seas like a distant reminder of the once great art of figureheads. This Major Tom of the travel industry manages the trick of reminding not only of the Botticelli-like birth of Venus but also of Michelangelo’s depiction of God the Father in the Sistine Chapel.
After five minutes with a view of the global dream of the ship as a utopian place of longing, even painting over it with motifs based on the bestiaries of Hieronymus Bosch would have to be considered in order to be able to see something cheerful again. The ship, a compliment to its designers, brings form and function together in all sharpness. It’s a monster full of AI cabins, cleaning robots and roller coasters – and it looks exactly like it.
On the MV homepage it says: “Outside modern elegance, inside equipment that is second to none (…) the travelers can expect a wide range of exciting entertainment innovations. In the on-board shopping mall, bathing area, in the theme park or Both action lovers and those seeking peace and quiet get their money’s worth on board cinema.” The animations show the “Global Class” surfing in front of port cities all over the world. Not unlike enemy conquerors, biblical plagues, or monsters of the sea. The cities are dwarfing at the moment: the mobile rows of houses are self-sufficient like destroyers. By the way, you don’t even have to go ashore anymore – what’s the point? But the best thing is that anyone who forgets to be on such a cruise ship because they are well cared for inside the maritime hazardous waste no longer has to endure the so-called ship from the outside. Unfortunately, the rest of the world does: SOS.