Commuting was a foreign concept to me.
The traffic light turns red. Again. And then again. It’s early in the morning, and Bengt Ole Scheffler is stopped on his bicycle at an intersection in the South Korean port city of Okpo. He’s on his way to work. But what’s unusual about this situation is that commuting to work isn’t something he’s used to at all.
“My workday usually begins where I sleep,” the 29-year-old explains. He had already served as second engineer on the “Hanoi Express.” From his cabin to the engine room, he only had to walk 172 steps down and 230 meters back (editor’s note: ‘aft’ is the term used aboard for ‘back’) toward the stern. The ship was both his home and his workplace. “Commuting? That was foreign concept to me,” he says with a laugh.
Scheffler is back on a ship now. But, for a few months, he lived a completely different life. Instead of steel walls, decks and ladders, his new environment was filled with apartment buildings, traffic lights and bike paths.
Scheffler would’ve never imagined that he would one day be cycling roughly 20 kilometers to work every day in Korea. What brought him to this foreign port city was the completion of the “Genova Express,” a newbuild of the Hamburg Express class. At just under 24,000 TEU, she is one of Hapag-Lloyd’s largest container ships.
Follow Bengt Ole Scheffler as he swaps steel decks for city streets in South Korea:
Being there was like a big dream come true for Bengt Ole Scheffler. “In my job, it really helps to become intimately familiar with the design of a ship and to see it grow with your own eyes,” he says.
In his new role, he was part of a team that reviewed, monitored and supervised the ship’s construction. “I mainly focused on the gas and auxiliary systems as well as the main engine – in other words, on precisely the systems that I would be responsible for every day on board,” he explains.
Scheffler’s days in Okpo started quietly. There was hardly anyone on the streets – just the hum of air conditioners and cooling units, plus bright neon signs that were kept on even after sunrise. “The first few hundred meters on the bike were amazingly peaceful,” he says. “You only really heard the noise of machines, and things were very bright.” After that, he would have to ride uphill for a bit, as the port city is built on steep slopes surrounding a bay.
The atmosphere only really changed during the last few meters to the office, where Scheffler would stop for a chat with his coworkers before cycling on to the shipyard. Then the scene would get more crowded. Entire columns of bicycles would stream down from residential high-rises toward the shipyard.
Like Bengt, about
colleagues arrive at the shipyard by bicycle.
15 minutes on the bike cleared the day’s frustrations.
The shipyard is a world of its own. More than 5,000 workers ride their bikes to it every day. “You had to regularly look for a suitable gap just to get across the road,” he says.
Cars are rare here, but the streets are packed with bikes and buses. Hardly a day went by when the prefabricated steel sections of the newbuilds were still standing at noon where they had been in the morning. “You would cycle to the ship in the morning, but everything would look different after lunch,” he says.
Scheffler traveled this route four times a day: to the ship in the morning, to the canteen at lunchtime, back to the ship, and then to the office again in the evening. This back-and-forth quickly became his workday routine. But even life in his off hours became completely new. “Shopping and cooking after work suddenly became part of my daily routine,” he says with a grin. “And it was pretty much impossible without a translation app, as most groceries were solely labeled in Korean.” On board, the Galley Department takes care of everything like that. But, in Okpo, he had to organize it all on his own.
Cycling served as a warm-up for the new day and as an outlet in the evening. “Even if the day didn’t go well, after 15 minutes on the bike, any negative impressions were usually just items on my to-do list,” Scheffler says.
Now that he’s on a ship again, Scheffler is back to his old routine. His workplace is much closer again, and he doesn’t have to think about buying food. He likes to think back on his time in Korea – and especially to something he experienced multiple times. “If you were out and about at the right time, the same Korean announcements would always come over the loudspeakers, followed by music. It’s hard to describe. You just have to experience it in person.”
Photos by: Hapag-Lloyd AG, Burning Heart Productions
Text by: Lisa Wagner
Videos by: Burning Heart Productions
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